WOODCOCK. 277 



stanton, and Hasborough. A fine woodcock in my own 

 collection met its death in a somewhat similar manner 

 close to this city. It was found on the 23rd of October, 

 1858, against the wall of Mr. Towler's residence, 

 adjoining Park Lane ; and in this instance, no doubt, 

 the lamps on Unthank's Road, which passes in front 

 of the house, had so dazzled it that the next instant 

 it dashed with full force against the front of the 

 building. On examining it soon after it was picked 

 up, I found the frontal bone completely smashed 

 in. Others are also, occasionally, found dead under 

 the telegraph wires,* having flown against them in their 

 migratory course, and some, I imagine, meet with a like 

 fate in their ordinary nocturnal Sittings. On one or two 

 occasions I have had freshly killed woodcocks offered me 

 for sale by the porters at the stations between Norwich 

 and Yarmouth, or by men at work on the line, which, 

 in such a locality, are very likely to have been thus 

 suddenly arrested in then- flight from the woods on the 

 one side to their marshy feeding-grounds on the other 

 side of the railroad.f In " The Naturalist " for 1853 



p. 1011) of woodcocks, wild ducks, snipes, gold-crested wrens, &c., 

 being picked up dead on the balcony of the Flamborough light- 

 house. The light keeper informed him that " the woodcocks 

 usually arrived with a north or north-east wind. Had once seen 

 some arrive during the day." 



* A still more remarkable occurrence was recorded in the 

 " Zoologist " for 1866 (p. 271), by Mr. A. P. Smith, of Ipswich 

 namely, the death of a woodcock, from being impaled on the arrow 

 end of a weathercock on one of the churches of that town, when 

 passing over, it was presumed with others, on a dark night. 



f A correspondent in the " Field " of March 21st, 1868, gives 

 a remarkable instance of the serious injury which a bird of this 

 kind may sustain through contact with the wires, and yet survive 

 the blow. In this case "an extreme lacerated wound extended 

 from the junction of the neck with the body in an oblique direction 

 across the breast from the left to the right side, separating all the 

 pectoral muscles from their insertions into the keel of the sternum, 



