256 TOUR IN SUTHERL AN DSHIRE. 



woodcocks in the act of returning, but I have often seen 

 them going down to the swamps in the evening, carrying 

 their young with them. Indeed it is quite evident that they 

 must in most instances transport the newly-hatched birds in 

 this manner, as their nests are generally placed in dry 

 heathery woods, where the young would inevitably perish 

 unless the old ones managed to carry them to some more 

 favourable feeding-ground. Both young woodcocks and 

 snipes are peculiarly helpless birds, as, indeed, are all the 

 waders, until their bills have hardened, and they have 

 acquired some strength of wing and leg. Unlike the young 

 of partridges and some other birds who run actively as soon 

 as hatched, and are able to fly well in a very short time, 

 woodcocks, snipes, and waders while young are very helpless, 

 moving about with a most uncertain and tottering gait, and 

 unable to take wing until they are full grown. Their 

 growth is, however, extremely rapid. 



Snipes, redshanks, and several other birds of this genus are 

 hatched and brought up on the same kind of ground on 

 which they feed; but woodcocks, in this country at least, are 

 generally hatched far from the marshes, and therefore the 

 old birds must, of necessity, carry their helpless young to 

 these places, or leave them to starve in the dry heather : nor 

 is the food of the woodcock of such a nature that it could be 

 taken to the young from the swamps in any sufficient 

 quantity. Neither could the old birds bring with it the 

 moisture which is necessary for the subsistence of all birds 

 of this kind. In fact they have no means of feeding their 

 young except by carrying them to their food, for they cannc 

 carry their food to them. 



The foot of the heron, as well as its general figure, seems 

 but little adapted for perching on trees, and yet whoever 

 visits a herony will see numbers of these birds perched in 

 every kind of attitude, on the very topmost branches of the 

 trees. The water -ousel manages to run on the ground at the 

 bottom of the water, in search of its food. All these actions 

 of birds seem not only difficult, but would almost appear to- 

 be impossible. Nevertheless the birds perform them with 

 ease, as well as many others equally curious and apparently 

 equally difficult. 



The feet of ducks are peculiarly ill adapted for perching 

 on trees ; nevertheless the golden-eye duck generally breeds 

 in hollow trees, not only in broken recesses of the trunk,. 



