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38 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S with great enthusiasm, whereas many of her kind found their taste offensive. We made these trips north every year of Betsy's life, or at least as long as she was physically able. But then Carly was born, and as my business continued to grow, we moved to a bigger house closer to the city. Years later I drove back down Boyd's Creek Road at dusk in early March to see if the woodcock were still there. But the dancing field was now a subdivision, and an asphalt lane lined with streetlights now ran where Mary Jane and Betsy and I had once hidden many times amid the honeysuckle. I was late getting home for supper that night. n Editor's Note: Michael Altizer's latest books, Nineteen Years To Sunrise and The Last Best Day, can be ordered at www.sportingclassicsstore.com. Or call (800) 849-1004. The author always welcomes and appreciates your comments, questions, and input. Please keep in touch at Mike@ AltizerJournal.com. Mary Jane and Betsy both pressed up against me, one on either side, Betsy shivering with the excitement of a young bird dog, Mary Jane just shivering, as I sat warm and toasty between them in utter delight at what we had discovered. The next evening Mary Jane wore her wools. W e watched the woodcock throughout the spring and well into June. They would disappear altogether as the moon took its leave, only to reappear when there was light enough in the nighttime sky for the hens to observe the males' performances above them. We watched them for years, eagerly anticipating their annual late-February, northbound return. When they came back through in the fall on their way south to their wintering grounds, Betsy and I would occasionally hunt them—but only half-heartedly, never taking more than one or two birds a year. For sure, we'd pursue them intently in Michigan each October, timing our annual northern grouse hunts to coincide with the woodcock flights. Betsy loved hunting woodcock, even retrieving them darkening sky, but a faint, crackling buzz from somewhere out in the field in front of us. Ten seconds later we heard it again, and it continued for a minute or more before we detected the twitter of wings rising into the air. For a moment they hovered a few feet above the ground, then commenced climbing, climbing, climbing, spiraling skyward, 200, 300, 400 hundred feet into the air, accompanied by an ethereal warble that intensified to a fever pitch as it reached its zenith, before transitioning into a more extended cadence as it turned and plummeted from the sky. I was certain that obliteration awaited the hapless singer as it hurtled to earth, and I raised my binoculars in a nearly hopeless attempt to intercept him. But then he was there, a fluttering, feathered form with his long beak set 90 degrees to his body, and suddenly all my hopes were confirmed as barely ten feet above the ground he righted himself and settled to earth, as lightly as a tuft of feathers settling into its nest. For an hour we sat there amid the honeysuckle, watching as the esteemed Skydancer repeated his performance.