EED-NECKED PHALAEOPE — WOODCOCK. 151 



THE EED-NECKED PHALAROPE. 



Phalaropus hyperhoreus. 

 The Red-necked Phalarope has occurred on one occasion 

 only, namely, in the winter of 1 834, when one was found in an 

 exhausted condition on Shotover Hill, near 0^iox(\.' [Zoologist, 



THE WOODCOCK. -^ 



Scolopax rusticida. 



The Woodcock, a regular and well-known winter visitor, is 

 never very plentiful, and in some parts of the county it 

 is even rare. About Kingham it is an occasional visitor 

 only, and in the northern part of the county (except in one or 

 two favoured spots) a few only are shot each year. The same 

 may be said of the woods at Nuneham. In Coggs Coppice, 

 near Witney, on a flinty soil, Mr. Harcourt tells me that 

 Woodcocks are much more plentiful than in Tar Wood, near 

 Stanton Harcourt, on the clay. 



The Woodcock has remained to breed in Oxfordshire in 

 several instances. Mr. Thomas Goatley, in a note dated the 

 loth April, 1848, and quoting probably from a local news- 

 paper, says — ' A few days ago a Woodcock^s nest, with four 

 eggs in, was discovered in Waterperry Wood, near Oxford, 

 belongingto J. W. Henley, Esq., M.P., by a gentleman residing 

 at Wheatley ; the nest was built in a bank, and composed 

 chiefly of dry moss. The old bird was sitting on the eggs 

 when the nest was found.^ Mr. Goatley also mentions two 

 other instances which had come to his knowledge, one at 

 Ditchley, and the other on the Eynsham Hall Estate, in 

 both of which cases the young birds were shown to him 

 [Zoologist, p. 2148), Mr. Arnatt has two fledgling Wood- 

 cocks which were captured, some forty years ago, in the 

 meadows at Eynsham, and Daniel mentions that ' a couple of 

 young Woodcocks, about half-grown, were caught by a coun- 

 tryman in Shrub Wood^ in the Parish of Caversham^ Oxon, 



