WOODCOCK 91 



to be indeed like a snipe in the very long straight bill, overshot 

 at the tip, and the peculiarly far-back position of the eyes, seen 

 to perfection in this bird, in which they are very large ; but the 

 bird is as big as a good pigeon, and pigeon-like in its shortness 

 of leg and absence of bare skin above the hock, while the plump- 

 ness and short tail rather suggest a duck, and the broad wings 

 sufficiently explain the un-snipe-like flight. The mottled brown 

 plumage, though very characteristic when one knows it, has 

 nothing to catch the eye at first sight, except perhaps the three 

 broad black bands across the back of the head, which are the 

 peculiar coat-of-arms of all true woodcock. 



It is worth while going into these details about so well known 

 a bird, for Blanford says black-tailed godwits were sold in the 

 Calcutta Bazaar as woodcock, and though this was not so in my 

 time, it shows that many people did not know this valued 

 sporting bird and table delicacy by sight ; for though this godwit 

 is much about the same size in body as a woodcock, and has a 

 very similar bill, it has a long neck and typical waders' legs, and 

 a quite different plumage from that above described. I only 

 once saw a woodcock in the Calcutta Bazaar, and that looked as 

 if it had not been killed recently; and, as a matter of fact, a 

 woodcock found anywhere away from the hills in India may be 

 put down as " lost or strayed," though in Burma they come 

 down to the plains much more than in India. In the hill-regions 

 they occur as far south as Ceylon and Tenassarim, and woodcock- 

 shooting is quite an established sport in the Nilgiris. Mr. 

 Stewart Baker sums the matter of the woodcock's Indian 

 distribution up by saying that " anywhere between November 1 

 and March 1 on hills over 4,000 feet elevation one should be able 

 to find woodcock if sufficient time and trouble is given to the 

 search, and there are suitable places for the birds to lie up in." 

 Such suitable places are where woodland cover is near swampy 

 spots in which the birds can feed, and these spots in hills are 

 naturally usually by streams, which has given rise to the idea 

 that the woodcock especially requires running water. It is, 

 everywhere except in the Himalayas, a cold-weather bird, but 

 in that range at heights of over ten thousand feet, it is a well- 

 known breeder, as it is all across Europe and Northern Asia. 



