May, 1899.] I09 



THE WOODCOCK AS AN IRISH-BREEDING BIRD. 



BY C. B. MOFFAT. 



In 1786 the Irish Parliament passed an " Act for the preserva- 

 tion of the Game/' whereby a forfeiture of ^5 was imposed on 

 11 every person who shall wilfully destroy the eggs of any 

 pheasant, partridge, quail, land-rail, moor-game, heath-game, 

 or grouse, wild duck, widgeon, plover, or snipe." The 

 significant omission of the Woodcock's name is, I think, a 

 convincing proof that no Irish landowner of that day had the 

 least cause to suspect that any Woodcocks nested on his 

 property. 



Nor is it possible that, as has sometimes been suggested, 

 the breeding of the Woodcock in Ireland was merely an 

 unobserved fact in days when less attention was paid to 

 natural history. Where Woodcocks breed freely, as they now 

 do in nearly every part of the country, their nests and young 

 are stumbled on every year in the most perfectly accidental 

 manner, while the play of the old birds over the tree-tops is, 

 during the nuptial season, one of the commonest sights of 

 evening. 



To what, then, is the increase of the Woodcock, as an Irish- 

 breeding species, attributable? The cause usually assigned 

 is the recent spread of plantations, but this appears to me 

 obviously insufficient. Oak-woods, not fir-woods, are the 

 Woodcock's favourite nesting localities, and remnants of our 

 old natural forest are, therefore, better calculated to attract 

 the bird than the cover afforded by new plantations, consisting 

 as these chiefly do of coniferous trees, whether larch, pine, or 

 spruce. All the Woodcock's nests which I have seen have 

 been in oak-woods, or woods largely consisting of oak, and 

 since the latter have been so extensively cut down in Ireland 

 during the past hundred years, I question whether the 

 suitableness of the country as a home for the Woodcock has 

 not rather diminished than increased. 



Perhaps it is a mistake to look solely to the conditions of 

 our own island for an explanation of the change. The Wood- 

 cock may, like the Brown Rat a century sooner, have found 



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