MIGRATION OF WOODCOCKS. 



is not owing to exhaustion from length of flight ; because, not 

 only those which are found on the eastern coast are usually 

 very weak and reduced, but even those which are killed in 

 Norway, before the migration has taken place, are found to be 

 already in an emaciated state, and infested with vermin. In 

 a short time, however, after frequenting their favourite haunts 

 in our country, they become fat and plump, and then, as the 

 season advances, they usually fall off, and the flesh of those 

 that have been accidentally met with in the summer is found 

 to be hard and dry. That their fatigue may be the consequence 

 of this previous debility is therefore not improbable : but it is 

 not the cause. We will next touch upon their first appearance 

 on our western instead of our eastern shores. It is a generally 

 prevailing opinion that the state of the moon has much to do 

 with the arrival and departure of Woodcocks ; but more ex- 

 perienced naturalists have remarked that the wind, and not the 

 moon, determines the time of their arrival, which is usually in 

 misty weather, during the northerly or easterly winds. Sup- 

 posing then that, about dusk — and we know that the migrations 

 of Woodcocks usually, if not invariably, take place at night — 

 a flight of them start from Norway, with a sharp northerly or 

 easterly wind helping them, in adding to the natural velocity 

 of their own most rapid flight, which has been estimated at 

 one hundred and fifty miles per hour, — high up in the air, as 

 we moreover know they fly, — the land below them, when they 

 had crossed the Channel, would be invisible, and, borne upon 

 the breeze, by the time they had continued their flight till early 

 dawn, where would they be ? Look to the map, and we shall 

 find them, after their flight, at the rate of one hundred and 

 twenty or one hundred and fifty miles per hour, far away to 

 the westward of Ireland, hovering over the Atlantic, steering 

 for America ; and that they are found at sea, we learn from 

 the most respectable authority. A Cornish gentleman, sailing 

 at a distance from land unusual for birds to be seen, discerned 

 a bird high in the air, which, gradually descending, alighted 

 on the deck, and proved to be a Woodcock. During a heavy 

 gale, two others sought shelter on board a line-of-battle ship 

 cruising in the Channel ; and a naval officer informed us, that 



