292 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
migrants that annually visit us in the breeding season, 
a local race, as it were, would ere long be established. 
From Mr. St. John’s observations on the breeding of 
the woodcock in Scotland, this species appears to have 
more than one brood in the year, as he found their 
nests at any time between March and August, but from 
the entire absence of these birds from the woods early 
in the autumn, he was led to believe that all that are 
bred in that country emigrate with their parents about 
the beginning of September. Such also appears to be 
the case in Norfolk, as neither young nor old have been 
observed from the beginning of August to the close 
of the following month. JI am not aware that the 
method adopted by the woodcock for carrying its young 
in the dusk of the evening from their nests in the woods 
to some moist feeding ground has ever been remarked 
in this county, but this interesting fact has been fully 
established on the authority of many trustworthy 
observers. St. John ascertained that “the old bird lifts 
her young in her feet,* and carries them one by one ;” 
and Mr. A. Hamond, jun., of Westacre, informs me 
that when in company with a friend and a gamekeeper, 
at Shielda, near Dingwall, in Ross-shire, he saw a 
woodecock in the act of carrying a young one in its claws 
for some distance. The old bird then returned, and 
clucked about like a hen to draw the rest of the brood 
same bird was shot in the same wood where it was first captured. 
Again, in February, 1802, another woodcock, captured in the same 
locality, was turned off with a tin ring attached to its leg, and the 
same bird was killed in the same wood, on the 11th of December 
following. 
* The editor of the “Ibis” (1868, p. 109) in reviewing a mono- 
graph of the woodcock, published in German, by Dr. Julius Hoffman, 
wherein this habit of transporting the young is referred to, re- 
marks, “ a friend of ours assures us it is effected by the parent 
grasping the young between the tarsi, and holding at the same 
time the bill downwards and backwards under the young bird.” 
