lUood- 



. Sure there can be no doubt but that woodcocks 



* and fieldfares leave us in the spring, in order to cross 



the seas, and to retire to some districts more suit- 

 able to the purpose of breeding. That the former pair before 

 they retire, and that the hens are forward with egg, I myself, 

 when I was a sportsman, have often experienced. It cannot 

 be denied but that now and then we hear of a woodcock's nest, or 

 young birds, discovered in some part or other of this island ; but 

 then they are always mentioned as rarities, and somewhat out of the 

 common course of things ; but as to redwings and fieldfares, 

 no sportsman or naturalist has ever yet, that I could hear, pretended 

 to have found the nest or young of those species in any part of these 

 kingdoms. 



At present, I do not know anybody near the sea-side that will 

 take the trouble to remark at what time of the moon woodcocks 

 first come : if I lived near the sea myself, I would soon tell you 

 more of the matter. One thing I used to observe when I was 

 a sportsman, that there were times in which woodcocks were so 

 sluggish and sleepy, that they would drop again when flushed just 

 before the spaniels, nay, just at the muzzle of a gun that had been 

 fired at them. Whether this strange laziness was the effect of a 

 recent fatiguing journey, I shall not prerume to say. G. W. 



120 



