292 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



migrants that annually visit us in the breeding season, 

 a local race, as it were, would ere long be established. 



From Mr. St. John's observations on the breeding of 

 the woodcock in Scotland, this species appears to have 

 more than one brood in the year, as he found their 

 nests at any time between March and August, but from 

 the entire absence of these birds from the woods early 

 in the autumn, he was led to believe that all that are 

 bred in that country emigrate with their parents about 

 the beginning of September. Such also appears to be 

 the case in Norfolk, as neither young nor old have been 

 observed from the beginning of August to the close 

 of the following month. I am not aware that the 

 method adopted by the woodcock for carrying its young 

 in the dusk of the evening from their nests in the woods 

 to some moist feeding ground has ever been remarked 

 in this county, but this interesting fact has been fully 

 established on the authority of many trustworthy 

 observers. St. John ascertained that " the old bird lifts 

 her young in her feet,* and carries them one by one ;" 

 and Mr. A. Hamond, jun., of Westacre, informs me 

 that when in company with a friend and a gamekeeper, 

 at Shielda, near Dingwall, in Ross-shire, he saw a 

 woodcock in the act of carrying a young one in its claws 

 for some distance. The old bird then returned, and 

 clucked about like a hen to draw the rest of the brood 



same bird was shot in the same wood where it was first captured. 

 Again, in February, 1802, another woodcock, captured in the same 

 locality, was turned off with a tin ring attached to its leg, and the 

 same bird was killed in the same wood, on the llth of December 

 following. 



* The editor of the " Ibis " (1868, p. 109) in reviewing a mono- 

 graph of the woodcock, published in German, by Dr. Julius Hoffman, 

 wherein this habit of transporting the young is referred to, re- 

 marks, " a friend of ours assures us it is effected by the parent 

 grasping the young between the tarsi, and holding at the 

 time the bill downwards and backwards under the young bird." 



