Last week while vacationing on Wolfe Island in the Thousand Islands(Wolfe is a large island but very quiet and mainly rural/agricultural) I was driving after sunset on one of the dirt/gravel roads that compose most of the island when I saw a woodcock sitting toward the side of the road. It did not move for a couple of minutes and I was able to get a photograph of it in the headlights before it flew off into the night sky. Wolfe Island offers perfect woodcock habitat, with many unused fields and scrub. I continued driving and about a quarter mile away from where I saw the woodcock, suddenly in the headlights on the dirt/gravel road ahead several small birds flushed up and flew away from the road. This happened at least three times as I drove slowly down the road, but I could never get a good sighting of these birds, other than they were small (robin-sized or smaller) and flew up suddenly ahead. There were probaly a dozen altogether. There were no other vehicles on this road. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what birds these might be. I'm not sure if they were young woodcocks (as I know they are active at dawn and dusk), or something else. My husband surmised that they were swallows (of which we saw hundreds on the telephone wires on the island, gathering for migration), but I didn't think they would be on the roadway at night. Any help regarding identification of these birds would be appreciated. --
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