WOODCOCK. 287 
cocks’ nests discovered many years ago, it seems 
probable that if in those days as much attention had 
been devoted to the habits of birds, as at the present 
time, still more instances would have been forthcoming. 
Mr. Lubbock speaks of a nest discovered in 1827, “in 
a wet low carr in the parish of Hickling. The old bird 
was killed by a stoat, on her nest, and the eggs sucked,” 
but, he adds, “her wings, however, which were shown 
by the person who discovered the nest, prevented the 
possibility of mistake as to the species.” The same 
author also states (1845) “that three young woodcocks | 
were taken in Brooke wood a few years back.” In 1848 
Mr. Alfred Newton recorded in the “ Zoologist” (p. 
2148) the finding of a nest with four eggs, at Riddles- 
worth, near Harling, by a man cutting reeds, about the 
middle of April, and the eggs when blown appeared to 
have been set upon about a week. In the same year, also, 
according to Messrs. Gurney and Fisher (* Zoologist,” 
p- 2185) another nest containing four young was found 
at Rainham, near Fakenham, on the 2nd of May; and 
Mr. Southwell informs me that he has eggs in his collec- 
tion from the neighbourhood of Holt. <A pair of old 
birds with nestlings, in Mr. Gurney’s possession, were 
p. 349), from his own observations on the breeding of the woodcock 
in the forests of Norway, says, “in these it chooses those places 
for its nest from which the trees have been cut down, on the out- 
skirts of the forest, and bordering upon the cultivated districts 
and the banks of the rivers. Whilst there we had the pleasure of 
taking its eggs, which were placed upon the bare ground, under 
some brushwood, and in a place from which the timber had been 
cleared, and in which the young spruce fir-trees were again springing.” 
From this we may presume that our young fir-coverts are far more 
suited to their breeding habits than were the old oak-woods and 
hazel-copses of which so few now remain, having been stubbed up 
and cultivated or entirely replanted. These, however, from their 
dense undergrowth and leafy shelter, had peculiar attractions for 
them in autumn and winter. 
