WOODCOCK. 295 



ounces.* Monster woodcocks, however, of even greater 

 weight than sixteen ounces have been recorded at 

 various times, and amongst others Yarrell mentions a 

 truly gigantic bird said to have been killed about the 

 year 1775, in the long plantation at !N"ar borough in 

 this county. The particulars respecting it, supplied to 

 him for publication by the then Lord Braybrooke, are 

 contained in a letter from Lady Peyton to Miss Hoste 

 in 1801. Having described its being shot during a deep 

 snow, whilst perched on a very low branch of a spruce 

 fir, weighed down to the ground, her ladyship remarks, 

 " I saw it weighed both in scales and steelyards, as did 

 Sir Henry and a carpenter at work from S waff ham, and 

 wonderful as the weight may appear it was exactly 

 twenty-seven ounces. I believe it was about 1775 or 

 1776. Some years before that a woodcock was killed 

 at Hadleigh, in Suffolk, which weighed twenty-four 

 ounces." Lord Braybrooke also referring to another 

 large bird observed in this county, says, " the Earl of 

 Leicester told me that he, in company with Mr. Ralf 

 Button, when they were young men, followed a gigantic 

 looking woodcock for some hours, near Holkham, but 

 could not get at him." In the two first instances the 

 weight is so extraordinary that in spite of the apparent 

 authentication, one cannot help suspecting some error 

 or deception in both cases. 



Pied and other varieties are occasionally, but not 

 often, met with, and are, therefore, eagerly sought 

 after when once seen. The most beautiful specimen 

 I ever saw was killed at Hanworth, near Aylsham, 

 on the 6th of November, 1856. Like one described 



* Sir Thomas Browne (Wilkin's edition, vol. iv., p. 380) has 

 the following memorandum in his " Common Place Book :" " A 

 woodcock in the total, weighed twelve ounces, and the feathers 

 weighed three-quarters of an ounce." 



