240 ENGLISH BIRD LIFE 



Woman, who is usually a more or less inferior 

 imitation of a man — so the hen Pheasant sometimes 

 takes upon herself the lordly and resplendent 

 plumage of the cock. She is not a success, how- 

 ever : she is incapable of domesticity,^ and biolo- 

 gists dismiss her curtly. Her imposing exterior is 

 merely the result of certain internal derangements. 



The Woodcock, too, is a bird with certain 

 marked peculiarities in its life's history. 



In these latter days, when so many birds are 

 growing scarcer in Great Britain, or have already 

 disappeared, it is satisfactory to find one . species 

 which appears to be increasing in numbers as a 

 regular English resident. A few decades ago the 

 nesting of a Woodcock in these islands was an 

 event of sufficient novelty to be deemed worthy of 

 special record. Now, owing it is thought to the 

 increase of plantations — especially of fir^ covers in 

 the vicinity of cultivated ground — nests are found 

 in every county, and the number of "cock" 

 remaining to breed is undoubtedly growing larger. 



Cover, however, is by no means essential to the 

 nesting of the Woodcock. In Shetland, for 

 instance, which is practically treeless, Saxby found 

 it breeding annually on the hillsides of Herman- 

 ness, the most northern point of the most northern 

 of the Shetland group. In England the breeding 



1 I make this statement on the high authority of Mr. Teget- 

 meier. Mr. Murdoch, however, tells me that the infertility of 

 these " hen-cocks " has since been disproved. Experiments 

 carried out at his recjuest by one of the King's gamekeepers 

 proved that they were perfectly fertile. 



