2 10 THE BOOK OF MIGRATORY BIRDS 



a full knowledge of the habits of birds during the moulting 

 season, I should say emphatically that the woodcock 

 breeding in the British Islands are stationary ; that is, in 

 the sense of not crossing the seas. I am glad to say that 

 this opinion is confirmed by several intelligent game- 

 keepers, on whose grounds the bird breeds in fair numbers 

 every season." 



Now, of course, unless these birds are marked it is 

 impossible to say what may become of them, for it is freely 

 admitted that it is not very easy to distinguish a foreign- 

 bred woodcock from one that is hatched in these islands, 

 nor is it at all easy to state the age of any woodcock. 

 Moreover, the experiments at Alnwick go to show that 

 some, at least, of the woodcock bred there do go a long 

 distance from their home, although it seems more than 

 probable that many of them return in after years to their 

 original home. Many of the birds bred at Alnwick have 

 been killed there some years after they were marked, but 

 that must not be taken as conclusive evidence that they 

 have never been far away. It may be conceded, perhaps, 

 that when a woodcock is killed at home in the same year 

 I hat it was bred, or even at any time during the following 

 shooting season, it has never been far away, but even here 

 we are jumping to a conclusion without being able to 

 substantiate it. 



By way of illustrating the fact that many home-bred 

 woodcock do travel very far from home, and that a certain 

 proportion of them do actually cross the sea at some time 

 or other, it may be as well to instance some of the cases 

 that have cropped up in the course of the Alnwick experi- 

 ments, which have now extended over a period of twenty 

 seasons. We will take first those that were killed in the 

 shooting season following their being marked that is, 

 within a year of hatching. The first example of this 

 occurred in December, 1897, when a bird of the year was 

 killed in Co. Wexford, Ireland. In the year following a 

 bird of that season's hatching was secured in Co. Cork, 

 and further instances, no doubt, have occurred, though 

 they have not been reported up to the present. 



