274 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



bodies in hazy weather with little wind, and that from 

 the north-east." Their condition on arrival, some being 

 extremely fat and others very lean, has, I imagine, 

 but little to do with the wind being favourable or not 

 for their passage, but depends rather upon the effects 

 of " short commons," physical weakness at the close 

 of the breeding season, or even stress of weather in the 

 country whence they started. From whatever point, 

 also, of the Scandinavian coast they wing their flight,* 

 the passage is, in all probability, performed between 

 sunset and sunrise, and if the tiny goldcrest survives 

 the same perilous expedition the woodcock, though 

 tired by its sustained efforts, need lose little in con- 

 dition during its eight or ten hours journey.t Too 



* In Norfolk, at least, the migration of woodcocks is not, as Bishop 

 Stanley remarks in his " Familiar History of Birds," " attended 

 with more mystery than that of most birds," for taking their 

 starting point to be from the shores of Norway and Sweden, it is 

 most natural that they should alight, as we know they do, on our 

 eastern coast. A much more difficult problem, however, to solve 

 satisfactorily is the statement, on good authority, that in Ireland 

 (" Birds of Ireland," vol. ii, p. 238) the earliest flights are seen 

 on the western coast, and the same in the south-west of England 

 in Devon and Cornwall, and in the Scilly Islands. On this point 

 Bishop Stanley's theory is, I think, the most plausible I have yet 

 met with, that a flight of these birds having quitted the coast of 

 Norway about dusk, might in their rapid flight, when high up in 

 the air, pass unconsciously in the dark hours over the intervening 

 land, and thus at day-break find themselves "far away to the 

 westward of Ireland, hovering over the Atlantic." In turning 

 once more to regain the nearest shore, they would consequently 

 alight on the west coast of Ireland, the Scilly Islands, or the 

 south-western coast of England. 



j- Selby, in support of his assertion that these birds migrate at 

 a considerable altitude, to avoid, as he presumes, the lower currents 

 of air, states that he was informed by a respectable wild fowl 

 shooter on the coast, that he had more than once seen the arrival 

 of woodcocks from the north-east at day dawn. His notice was 



