Volume 34, Plate XI / Ornithology (Birds)

Woodcock

Scolopax rusticola

The largest species of its genus and long prized for the table, the Woodcock is chiefly a winter migrant arriving in October and leaving in February, though a few breed in dry spots often far from water. Its plumage mixes chestnut-brown, ochraceous, and grey with black bands across the crown, and it feeds by boring into soft mud for aquatic insects and larvae, resting by day in sheltered woods and feeding at twilight.