274 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
bodies in hazy weather with little wind, and that from 
the north-east.”” Their condition on arrival, some being 
extremely fat and others very lean, has, I imagine, 
but little to do with the wind being favourable or not 
for their passage, but depends rather upon the effects 
of “short commons,” physical weakness at the close 
of the breeding season, or even stress of weather in the 
country whence they started. From whatever point, 
also, of the Scandinavian coast they wing their flight,* 
the passage is, in all probability, performed between 
sunset and sunrise, and if the tiny goldcrest survives 
the same perilous expedition the woodcock, though 
tired by its sustained efforts, need lose little in con- 
dition during its eight or ten hours journey.t Too 
* In Norfolk, at least, the migration of woodcocks is not, as Bishop 
Stanley remarks in his “ Familiar History of Birds,” “attended 
with more mystery than that of most birds,” for taking their 
starting point to be from the shores of Norway and Sweden, it is 
most natural that they should alight, as we know they do, on our 
eastern coast. A much more difficult problem, however, to solve 
satisfactorily is the statement, on good authority, that in Ireland 
(“Birds of Ireland,” vol. ii., p. 238) the earliest flights are seen 
on the western coast, and the same in the south-west of England— 
in Devon and Cornwall, and in the Scilly Islands. On this point 
Bishop Stanley’s theory is, I think, the most plausible I have yet 
met with, that a flight of these birds having quitted the coast of 
Norway about dusk, might in their rapid flight, when high up in 
the air, pass unconsciously in the dark hours over the intervening 
land, and thus at day-break find themselves “far away to the 
westward of Ireland, hovering over the Atlantic.’ In turning 
once more to regain the nearest shore, they would consequently 
alight on the west coast of Ireland, the Scilly Islands, or the 
south-western coast of England. 
+ Selby, in support of his assertion that these birds migrate at 
a considerable altitude, to avoid, as he presumes, the lower currents 
of air, states that he was informed by a respectable wild fowl 
shooter on the coast, that he had more than once seen the arrival 
of woodcocks from the north-east at day dawn. His notice was 
