212 FRANK FORESTER S FIELD SPORTS. 



liantv renders him a more agi-eeable object of pursuit at this 

 iDeriod of the year, tlie rather that he is now found often in 

 company with bevies of Quail, and that almost invariably the 

 latter bird, when flushed in the stubbles where he feeds, flies 

 for shelter to the very covert most haunted by the Woodcock. 



All this will, however, vary more or less, according to the 

 nature and face of the country ; for where there is excellent 

 feeding and breeding ground, not interspersed with the ferny 

 hill-sides, overgrown with young, thrifty, thickset woodland. 

 Cock do not desert the region, but are found almost in the same 

 haunts as in summer. 



And where that is the case, the sportsman may note this dis- 

 tinction, that whereas in summer, when he has once killed off" 

 clean the whole of the one, two, or three broods, which frequent 

 a small piece of coppice, or swamp thicket, it will be utterly 

 useless for him to beat it again, he may now, day after day, kill 

 every bird on a piece of good feeding ground, and will still 

 each succeeding morning find it supplied with its usual com- 

 plement. 



I first learned this fact in Orange county, where, within half 

 a mile of the tavern at which I put up, there is a small, dry, 

 thorny brake, with a few tall trees on it, lying on a sort of 

 island, surrounded by a very wet bog meadow, and half encir- 

 cled by a muddy streamlet, overhung with thick alders, the 

 whole aflair, brake, meadow, and all, not exceeding three or 

 four acres. 



I knew the place of old as a ceitain summer-find for a single 

 brood of Cock. In October, on the first day of my visit to the 

 country, I beat this brake, at throwing off" in the morning, and 

 bagged eleven fine fall birds — being four or five more than I 

 expected — two birds went away wild without being shot at, and 

 could not be found again. On the following day, having finished 

 my beat early, and it not being above a mile out of my way 

 home, I thought I would try to get the two survivors, and was 

 much and most agreeably surprised at bagging nine birds, all 

 that were flushed, on the spot. 



