WOODCOCK. 325 



Clare, killed thirty couple in a day ; and on Lord Ardilaun's 

 property at Ashford, county Gal way, 173 Cock fell to six 

 guns in two days.* 



A Woodcock when flushed on the coast has been known to 

 settle on the sea, and when again disturbed, rose without 

 difficult}' and flew away. But this is not always the 

 case. Mr. Falconer, of Christchurch, has recorded (Zool. 

 1848, p. 2023), " that some years ago, a few miles from 

 the Land's End, the sea was strewed with hundreds of 

 Woodcocks : it is probable that they were exhausted by their 

 long flight, and hundreds seem to have fallen together into 

 the sea ; some of them were taken up, and found to be 

 perfectly fresh." Numerous instances are recorded of 

 Woodcocks alighting on the deck of ships in the English 

 Channel and elsewhere. The rapidity of flight of this bird 

 is at times so great that a pane of plate-glass more than 

 three-eighths of an inch thick has been smashed by the 

 contact, and one was actually impaled on the weathercock of 

 one of the churches in Ipswich (Zool. ss. p. 271). 



The return migration takes place in March, at which 

 season the birds, although generally paired, were formerly shot 

 in this country, until protected by law after the 1st of that 

 month. Owing to the increase of plantations, especially of 

 fir-covers in the vicinity of cultivated ground, the number of 

 birds which now remain to breed very largely exceeds that of 

 former years, when every nest of a Woodcock was a novelty 

 to be recorded. Those counties which possess large and 

 undisturbed woods are naturally among the most favoured, 

 but even Middlesex must not be omitted from the list, for 

 the nest has been found in Caen Wood ; whilst on the Surrey 

 side of the river it has been noticed so near to the metropolis 

 as Streatham. Li the eastern division of Sussex, according 

 to Mr. T. Monk, of Lewes, whose carefully collected statistics 

 were pubHshed in ' The Field,' 25th February, 1871, there 

 were annually, on an average, from 150 to 200 nests a year. 

 Its distribution throughout the breeding-season is tolerably 

 general in Scotland, especially in the more wooded districts, 



* ' The Fowler in Ireland,' pp. 218-230. 



