8o COCK SHOOTING 



spots alongside the delicate prints of their somewhat long and 

 slender pink feet. 



It is a vastly interesting sight to watch a feeding bird. The 

 point of the bill is thrust into the earth until buried to the base. 

 Then for a few seconds the bird keeps perfectly still as if listening, 

 while the great round eyes seem to assume a very knowing look. 

 Perhaps some slight movement in the earth has betrayed the spot 

 where an earthworm is lurking. The bill is quickly withdrawn, and 

 instantly a dexterous thrust reaches the luckless worm, which is 

 drawn to daylight and quickly devoured. That the woodcock 

 has an incredibly voracious appetite and a marvellously rapid diges- 

 tion are facts that have been amply proved. A bird in captivity has 

 been known to consume more than its own weight of angleworms 

 within twenty-four hours. 



Incubation occupies about twenty days. The eggs are four and 

 sometimes five in number, somewhat pear-shaped, of a light buff 

 colour, spotted with irregular markings of black and maroon, and 

 streaked with pale grey. The mother bird collects a few dry leaves 

 together in a slight depression of the ground, and strews others 

 about, this rude nest, in order to make it a difficult matter to 

 detect her presence while sitting. One's attention may be drawn 

 to the exact spot not fifteen feet distant, and yet one may be 

 unable to distinguish her from a parcel of brown withered leaves, 

 until at length one perchance discovers the gleam of the prominent 

 liquid hazel eye. When at length the bird is flushed she will feign 

 lameness, fly heavily with legs dropped, and attempt the same 

 feints as the grouse tribe in order to lead away the intruder from 

 her eggs or young. 



If not disturbed, so soon as the young brood is able to fly the 

 old cock leads them away to the alder swamps, or beneath the 

 shrubbery which edges some sluggish stream. 



The female is greatly attached to her nest, and both parents 

 prove their devotion by occasionally carrying off their callow off- 

 spring held between the downy thighs, while the long bill presses 

 the precious burden gently to the breast. Gilbert White found it 

 difficult to believe Scopoli when he asserted of the European wood- 

 cock that pullos rostro portat fugiens ab hoste, but the habit of carry- 

 ing their young away from danger is undoubtedly common to both 

 species. 



Instances of touching parental devotion have occasionally 

 come under the notice of the writer. Once when a farmer was 

 improving the dry weather of an early spring to burn his meadows, 

 from one of the piles of brush collected for burning, after fire had 

 been applied, a woodcock was observed to issue, and after flitting 



