CHAP. TWENTY-EIGHT WOODCOCK 



sive woods of Sussex, I have often seen them in the even- 

 ings, about the beginning of April, flying to and fro in 

 chace of each other, uttering a hoarse croaking, and some- 

 times enofaginor each other at a kind of tiUinsf-match with 

 their long bills in the air. I remember an old poaching 

 keeper, whose society I used greatly to covet when a boy, 

 shooting three at a shot, while they were engaged in an 

 aerial tournament of this kind. 



There was a sporting turnpike-man (a rare instance of 

 such a combination of professions), on Ashdown forest, in 

 Sussex, who used to kill two or three woodcocks every 

 evening for a week or two in March and April — shooting 

 the birds while he smoked his pipe, and drank his smug- 

 gled brandy and water at his turnpike-gate, which was sit- 

 uated in a glade in the forest, where the birds were in the 

 habit of flying during the twilight. 



I rather astonished an English friend of mine, who was 

 staying with me in Inverness-shire during the month of 

 June, by asking him to come out woodcock-shooting one 

 evening. And his surprise was not diminished by my pre- 

 parations for our battue, which consisted of ordering out 

 chairs and cigars into the garden at the back of the house, 

 which happened to be just in the line of the birds' flight 

 from the woods to the swamps. After he had killed three 

 or four from his chair, we stopped murdering the poor 

 birds, who were quite unfit to eat, having probably young 

 ones, or eggs, to provide for at home, in the quiet recesses 

 of the woods, along the banks of Loch Ness, which covers 

 afford as good wookcock-shooting as any in Scotland. 



The female makes her nest, or rather, lays her eggs — 

 363 



