288 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
taken some years since at Stratton Strawless ;* and in 
Lord Hastings’s collection is a case containing a pair of 
old birds and three young ones, which were hatched at 
Melton Constable, but the exact date is not known. Mr. 
Lambert, gamekeeper on the Kimberley estate, assures 
me that at least forty years ago he knew of a wood- 
cock’s nest in the woods at Blickling; another was seen 
about three years back at Hempstead, by Mr. Thomas 
Kdwards; and some twenty years since, as I learn from 
Mr. Southwell, the shells of woodcocks’ eggs, in a nest 
which the young had just left, were found at Bawsey, 
by Mr. Burlingham, of Lynn. At Fakenham Wood, in 
Suffolk, but not very far from the border, Mr. A. Newton 
has heard of woodcocks breeding more than once, though 
some twenty years ago. From Culford he has also a 
nest with a rotten egg, taken after the others had 
hatched, in 1867. The nest is a deep cup of dry oak 
and Spanish chestnut leaves. 
Of more recent date the following are all that have 
come under my own notice, but I doubt not that further 
enquiries would elicit even more instances :— 
On the 2nd of May, 1851, a pair of young birds 
about three weeks old were sent up to Norwich for 
preservation, taken at Holkham; and a third nestling 
was kept alive for several weeks, but from want of 
caution in feeding itself was choked, as supposed, by 
the “diet” of worms. About the same time a game- 
keeper at Brooke, flushed an old woodcock and four 
young ones, and succeeded in catching two of the latter. 
On the 17th of May also of that year, I saw a fine old 
bird, quite fresh, hanging up for sale in our fishmarket. 
* Morris in his “ British Birds” (vol. iv., p. 254) states that a 
woodcock was shot at Mr. Marsham’s, of Stratton Strawless, in 
Norfolk, about the 7th of June, 1847. The same fact is also 
recorded in the “Zoologist” for that year (p. 1876) by the Rey. 
H. T. Frere. 
