4. WOODCOCK. 
They pair in March previous to withdrawing. They return 
to the same haunt. 
The nest of the Woodcock, whether it be that more obser- 
vations have been made, or that more instances have really 
occurred, has certainly been found in much greater numbers 
of late years than formerly, when such a thing was thought 
to be of very rare occurrence. 
A Woodcock was shot at Mr. Marsham’s, of Stratton, in 
Norfolk, about the 4th. of June, 1847. In Yorkshire they 
appear to breed regularly in the woods of Storr’s Hall, and 
Farnley, also occasionally near Sheffield, and in Wharncliffe 
Wood, near Rotherham, ‘the place I know it well,’ also in 
Brodsworth Wood, near Doncaster. 
They build every year, not very rarely, on Cannock Chase, 
and in the preserves of the Marquis of Anglesea, at Beaudesert 
Park, near Rugeley, Staffordshire, as Thomas G. Bonney, Esq., 
of St. John’s College, Cambridge, informs me; three were 
found there in May, 1848. A nest, with four eggs, was 
found, as I am written word by Stephen Stone, Esq., on the 
15th. of April, 1853, in Bagley Wood, near Oxford. Another 
in Worcestershire; another in Kent, at Seacock’s Heath, near 
Hawkhurst; others near Tonbridge and Goudhurst. 
Instances, more or less numerous, have occurred in Bed- 
fordshire, in the woods near Chicksand Priory, Ryton Wood, 
near Coventry, Warwickshire, and Hore Park Wood, and 
Baxterley, near Nuneaton, in the same county; the preserves 
of Linley Hall, Shropshire, the seat of R. More, Esq. Scawby, 
near Brigg, Lincolnshire, in woods belonging to Sir Jolin 
Nelthorpe, Bart.; Middlemagsh, near Sherborne, Dorsetshire, 
in a cover belonging to H. G. Sturt, Esq. Highclere, Hamp- 
shire, the seat of Lord Carnarvon; in different parts of 
Norfolk; in Sussex, near Battle, and at Brede and Pilstye; 
in Surrey, near Godalming; in Herefordshire, at Derndale. 
In Monmouthshire, near Usk; in Hampshire, in Highden 
Wood, near Horndean, and the Forest of Bere; in Buck- 
inghamshire, near Uxbridge; also in Hertfordshire. In Not- 
tmghamshire, in a wood at Shireoaks, near Worksop. 
in Scotland, at Conan, in Rosshire, and at Brahan Castle 
in the same county; also in Aberdeenshire, at Castle Forbes; 
and at Dunkeld, in Perthshire. A pair were found with a 
nest of three young ones, in the month of April, near Dornoway 
Castle, the seat of the Harl of Moray; another on the shore 
of Loch Lomond, near Belloch Castle. 
