WOODCOCK 



Scolopax rusttcula 







HE Woodcock is not a common bird during the breeding 

 season, and is very locally distributed throughout the 

 British Islands, but large numbers of these birds visit us 

 during the spring and autumn migrations. 



The Woodcock is almost entirely a night-bird, and 

 only leaves the woods, where it skulks during the day 

 among the brushwood and dead bracken, when the 

 twilight descends. Then it seeks its food among the marshes, preferring 

 those where there is running water and plenty of rank vegetation. Its food 

 consists almost entirely of small earthworms, but it will eat the larvae of 

 some insects, and on rare occasions it has been known to eat vegetable food. 

 The Woodcock has regular paths to and from its feeding-grounds, and 

 numbers of them used to be caught in specially adapted snares, consisting of 

 a stick with a noose spread on it, set in the path, and fastened to a springy 

 sapling bent over. When the stick was displaced by the bird stepping on 

 it, the sapling sprang up and hitched the noose round the unfortunate bird's 

 legs, suspending it in the air. 



During the breeding season the male may often be seen in the twilight 

 or early morning flying backwards and forwards above the wood where his 

 mate is sitting, uttering his peculiar cry, which consists of two or three notes, 

 the first a curious, long-drawn, hollow sound, followed by two quick high 

 whistles uttered at intervals. During this performance, which often lasts 

 twenty minutes, the plumage is puffed out, and the flight is slow and steady, 

 giving the bird rather the appearance of an owl. 



The Woodcock is a very early breeder, and full clutches of its eggs may 

 be taken during the first week in April. I have seen a nest with its full 

 complement of eggs as early as the i8th of March in the valley of the Forth 



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