236 Wild Birds and their Haunts 



times, is wide open iu its proper place, singularly near the 

 top of her poll ; which orb, by its great brilliance and 

 size, proclaims the bird to be of nocturnal habits. Says 

 Butler : ' ' For fools are known by looking wise, as men 

 find woodcocks by their eyes." 



There are three or four eggs to the clutch. These are 

 creamy or stone-grey, with often faint violet-washed 

 marks, and decided warm brown blotches at the larger 

 end. By mid- April I have seen the nestling chicks, which 

 are of a light buffish brown above, with dark chestnut 

 stripe on the centre of the crown. This, although inter- 

 rupted at the nape, is taken up again and carriea down the 

 back. There are similar though undecided transverse 

 broad stripes and the under parts become almost white. 



These nidulants — one can hardly call them nestlings — 

 ' ' run away from home " almost immediately they are 

 hatched, just like water-loving moorhens, coots, mallard, 

 and other youngsters of the duck tribe. On one note- 

 worthy occasion, however, I was just in time, along with a 

 friend carrying a camera, to find a still plump mother- 

 woodcock sitting as tightly as a tired newly-arrived imm- 

 grant will do in her determination to protect half a hand- 

 ful of her offspring in the transitional stage. We after- 

 wards found that she retained charge of one chick, that a 

 second had skedaddled, and that a third was chipping its 

 shell. Close at hand were some fragments of a shell from 

 which a chick had quite recently been hatched. However, 

 this mother-bird faced the camera with sufficient equa- 

 nimity, and subsequently allowed Harry Lavender, the 

 gamekeeper, to stroke her back. He went as far as to say 

 that he would lift her off the ground and pretend to put her 

 in his pocket ; but this proposed outrage on the bird's 

 confidence he failed to commit. She fled, but was sharply 

 back again, to be welcomed by two nidulants and a half, 

 which within a couple of hours became a full family com- 

 plement of four, and several passable photos were secured. 



Another maternal woodcock declined this outside 

 familiarity. On being disturbed by two strangers she 

 snatched up the chick nearest to her, and bore it off to a 

 distance — right across the river in the valley, said our 



