THE Woopcock. 45 
acting strangely in broad daylight, and our author could see him 
plainly. At first he took soft clay in his bill from the edge of 
the water, and seemed to be smearing it om one leg near the 
knee. Then he fluttered away on one foot for a short distance, 
and seemed to be pulling tiny roots and fibres of grass, which 
he worked into the clay that he had already smeared on the leg. 
Again he took more clay and plastered it over the fibres, putting 
on more and more till the enlargement could be plainly seen, 
thus working away for fully fifteen minutes. Then he stood 
perfectly still for a full hour under an overhanging sod, his only 
motion being an occasional rubbing and smoothing of the clay 
bandage with his bill, until it hardened enough to suit him, and 
then he disappeared in the thick woods. The woodcock had a 
. broken leg, and had deliberately put it into a clay cast to hold 
the broken bones in place until they should knit together again. 
This at all events was our author’s full belief, confirmed by the 
opinion of many gunners who had frequently shot birds whose 
legs had at some time been broken and had healed again perfectly 
straight, and he was fully confirmed a long time afterwards as to 
the truthfulness of his opinion. A friend shot a woodcock, 
which, on being brought in by the dog, was found to have a lump 
of hard clay on one of its legs. He chipped the clay off with 
his pen-knife and found a broken bone, which was then almost 
healed and as straight as ever.’’ Personally, I have never seen 
a woodcock with clay adhering to its leg, but the above account 
is interesting, and Professor Fatio is an authority whose state- 
ments deserve attention. There is something very touching in 
the thought of an unhappy little bird acting as his own surgeon, 
and if this story has the effect of restraining those who are in the 
habit of trying “ marvellously long shots ’’ at woodcock, and by 
so doing often cruelly wounding them, it will have served some 
purpose. 
We have already commented on the increasing tendency the 
woodcock shows to nest in the British Isles, and certainly during 
the past spring (1907) the number of woodcock nesting through- 
out Dumfriesshire has been more than ever. The following 
observations of what we noticed at Capenoch this year may 
perhaps be interesting. In the months of April, May, and June, 
the birds apparently kept as their headquarters the coverts where 
they were hatched. But in the months of July and August, as 
