338 Woodcocks and Fieldfares 



I at first imagined it was an owl or a goatsucker, the former 

 being commonly, and the latter occasionally, seen in that wood. 

 I afterwards found, however, on seeing several of these birds 

 at an earlier hour in the evening, that they were woodcocks, 

 and that four or five couple of them circled the wood every 

 evening, being on the wing for an hour or two at a time, with 

 a varied flight; sometimes rapid and pursuing each other, 

 uttering a sharp, but not very loud, whistling note ; and some- 

 times slow and flapping, when an incessant low croaking was 

 kept up by each individual, often not unlike the purring of a 

 cat, or the noise of a spinning wheel. From this time, through- 

 out the summer, I could on any evening, between five and nine 

 o'clock, see several cocks rise, generally from the lower and 

 moister parts of a large wooded hill, of which a high peak in 

 the centre overlooks the whole. The notes gradually ceased, 

 as the season advanced ; and I rather imagine that these cir- 

 cular flights also gradually ceased, though, in the course of our 

 walks, cocks were often flushed, until the more usual season 

 arrived, when they no longer excited so much attention. I have 

 often seen these woodcocks approaching me, in low covered 

 walks, and so little alarmed as almost to brush my hat with their 

 wings, as they quietly passed over my head. This seemed to 

 me to be the hour of feeding on the wing, at least their flight 

 so much resembled that of night birds which feed on moths, 

 &c.j that the probability of this occurred to me, although I am 

 aware that their usual food is found upon the ground, amongst 

 damp leaves and moist grass. It is by the knowledge of this 

 low flight of the woodcock in the covered alleys and walks of 

 the forest, that the foreign poacher takes such numbers of them 

 in nets set for the purpose ; and I could often have caught 

 them in a common hoop-net, as they passed me. 



I have long been acquainted, as a sportsman, with the usual 

 peaceful habits of the woodcock, during its winter residence 

 in our climate ; but I never, at that season, heard any sound 

 but that of its wings on being flushed. I imagine, therefore, 

 that the low croaking and the occasional whistle are peculiar 

 to the period of incubation, like that singular noise made by 

 the snipe in spring, as it descends rapidly in the air, during its 

 circuitous flight over its native morass. 



With regard to the nests of the woodcocks to which I 

 have alluded, I never took any trouble to search for them, not 

 wishing to disturb them, and because I had already more than 

 once seen both eggs and young ones. I have no doubt what- 

 ever of the fact mentioned by your correspondent W. L., of 

 the old birds occasionally carrying their young in their claws* 

 I once flushed an old woodcock and three young ones, in the 



