In the spring, while winning his mate, Whitooweek has one habit which, when seen at the edge of the alder patch, reminds you instantly of the grass-plovers of the open moors and uplands, and of their wilder namesakes of the Labrador barrens. Indeed, in his fondness for burned plains, where he can hide in plain sight and catch no end of grasshoppers and crickets without trouble to vary his diet, and in a swift changeableness and fearlessness of man, Whitooweek has many points in common with the almost unknown plovers. In the dusk of the evening, as you steal along the edge of the woods, you will hear a faint _peenk, peenk_ close beside you, and as you turn to listen and locate the sound a woodcock slants swiftly up over your head and begins to whirl in a spiral towards the heavens, clucking and twittering ecstatically. It is a poor kind of song, not to be compared with that of the oven-bird or grass-plover, who do the same thing at twilight, and Whitooweek must help his voice by the clicking of his wings and by the humming of air through them, like the sharp voice of a reed in windy weather; but it sounds sweet enough, no doubt, to the little brown mate who is standing perfectly still near you, watching and listening to the performance. At an enormous height, for him, Whitooweek whirls about madly for a few moments and then retraces his spiral downwards, clucking and twittering the while, until he reaches the tree-tops, where he folds his wings directly over his mate and drops like a plummet at her head. Still she does not move, knowing well what is coming, and when within a few feet of the ground Whitooweek spreads his wings wide to break his fall and drops quietly close beside her. There he remains quite still for a moment, as if exhausted; but the next moment he is strutting about her, spreading wings and tail like a wild turkey-gobbler, showing all his good points to the best advantage, and vain of all his performances as a peacock in the spring sunshine. Again he is quiet; a faint _peent, peent_ sounds, as if it were a mile away; and again Whitooweek slants up on swift wings to repeat his ecstatic evolutions.
Both birds are strangely fearless of men at such times; and if you keep still, or move very softly if you move at all, they pay no more attention to you than if you were one of the cattle cropping the first bits of grass close at hand. Like the golden plover, whose life is spent mostly in the vast solitudes of Labrador and Patagonia, and whose nature is a curious mixture of extreme wildness and dense stupidity, they seem to have no instinctive fear of any large animal; and whatever fear Whitooweek has learned is the result of persistent hunting. Even in this he is slower learn than any other game bird, and when let alone for a little season promptly returns to his native confidence.