WOODCOCK. 275 



tired, however, to pass on at once to more secure shelter- 

 particularly those whose powers, as above stated, have 

 been previously enfeebled — many fall victims to the keen 

 sportsman, who, from experience knowing when and 

 where to look for them, turns out early in the morning 

 to search the marram-banks and fences bordering on the 

 coast. The Denes and even, as Mr. Lubbock says, " the 

 kitchen gardens on the outskirts of Yarmouth are some 

 times, for a few hours, full of these birds ; ten couple 

 have been killed there by one sportsman." The rough 

 marine herbage* also on the Blakeney "meals" forms 

 a like resting place for a time, as well as for the large 

 flights of blackbirds, that make their appearance on our 

 coast in October so regularly that the gunners in those 

 parts are accustomed to search for woodcocks when the 

 blackbirds are over.f 



attracted by a sound high up in the air, which " he found pro- 

 ceeded from birds descending in a direction almost perpendicular; 

 and which, upon approaching the shore, separated and flew towards 

 the interior." Some alighted in the hedges close by, which he 

 pursued and shot, and these proved to be woodcocks. 



* Amongst the plants which here form a shelter for our 

 feathered migrants, and a grateful relief to the eye after that wide 

 waste of ooze and shingle, are the remote flowered sea lavender 

 (Statice hahusiensis) , sea lavender (Statice limonium), seaside 

 starwort (Aster tripolium) , annual seablite (Suceda marititna), 

 shrubby seablite (Suceda fruticosa), seacoast wormwood (Absin- 

 thium maritima), and stalked sea-purslane (Obione portulacoidesj . 

 Spurn Point on the Yorkshire coast, as we learn from Mr. 

 Cordeaux (" Zoologist," 1868, p. 1^518), is a similar resting place 

 for the woodcock and goldcrest in the autnmn, offering like shelter 

 in the marram grass, sea bind-weed, sea-holly, and thickets of 

 prickly sallow-thorn. 



t The following extract from the "Household Book" of the 

 L'Estranges, of Hunstanton, seems in a remarkable manner to 

 confirm the joint arrival of these two species, thus recorded as far 

 back as 1522. " Itm. pd to Stephyn Percy for ij woodcocks and 

 iiij blackbyrds, iiij<J- " This is the only instance in which the 

 2n 2 



