198 THE BOOK OF MIGRATORY BIRDS 



undergrowth at their very feet. No bird sits closer or pre- 

 serves better silence than the woodcock; her long bill of 

 three inches being meanwhile depressed. It apparently 

 needs a bit of special training to detect her, for she is in 

 excellent harmony with the general tone of her surround- 

 ings. The protective colouring is noticeable in her wood- 

 brown back and breast, and in various tinted mottlings 

 which blend with dead leaves and the soil over which they 

 are strewn. Reddish brown is overlaid with oval chest- 

 nut marks, and shades of buff melt into golden and silvern 

 grey with purposeful but quiet magic. Usually the wood- 

 cock is betrayed by her luminous, convex, black-brown 

 eye, which, at such times, is wide open in its proper place, 

 singularly near the top of her poll ; which orb, by its great 

 brilliance and size, proclaims the bird to be of nocturnal 

 habits. Says Butler: "For fools are known by looking 

 wise, as men find woodcocks by their eyes." 



There are three or four eggs to the clutch. These are 

 creamy or stone-grey, with often faint violet-washed 

 marks, and decided warm brown blotches at the larger 

 end. By mid-April I have seen the nestling chicks, which 

 are of a light bufHsh brown above, with dark chestnut 

 stripe on the centre of the crown. This, although inter- 

 rupted at the nape, is taken up again and carried down the 

 back. There are similar though undecided transverse 

 broad stripes, and the under parts become almost white. 



These nidulants one can hardly call them nestlings 

 "run away from home" almost immediately they are 

 hatched, just like water-loving moorhens, coots, mallard, 

 and other youngsters of the duck tribe. On one note- 

 worthy occasion, however, I was just in time, along with a 

 friend carrying a camera, to find a still plump mother- 

 woodcock sitting as tightly as a tired newly-arrived immi- 

 grant will do in her determination to protect half a hand- 

 ful of her offspring in the transitional stage. We after- 

 wards found that she retained charge of one chick, that a 

 second had skedaddled, and that a third was chipping its 

 shell. Close at hand were some fragments of a shell from 



