Very nice, Wild Skies.
Ive seen modern O/U and SxS Bulino engraving depicting woodcock, and on a Flues someone depicted on a forum. Ill see I can find that reference. It may have been in Walts Ithaca book.
Leverhead, arent you from NJ? The Delaware Bay side of Cape May was and still is a major stopover on shorebird migrations coincidental with horseshoe crab spawning in the spring. Migrant Red Knots from as far away as Tierra del Fuego stuff themselves with the NJ crab eggs before long distancing to inside the Arctic Circle for nesting.
There was major shorebird decoy carving and shorebird hunting on the Jersey shore. Here are a couple of Cape May curlews in original condition. The top one was swatted with what looks like a load of #4. Below the decoys is a group of curlews feeding in the Georgia marsh where they stopover before heading to Hudson Bay. One has a fiddler. A friend took the photo.
Yes, I'm about 1.5 hours from Cape May. Cape May's main attraction (for me) has always been bird watching, and migratory birds do stop off there. I really just didn't realize people hunted those shore birds. Just navet on my part.
