CHAPTER VIII 



WOODCOCK AND SNIPE 



THE nest of the Woodcock is made in some dry, 

 quiet part of the wood or cover where dead leaves 

 cover the ground, and trailing brambles are fairly in 

 abundance, mixed with rough tussocks of torey grass 

 and dead twigs and branches. It is lined with dead 

 grass and leaves. The eggs, four in number, vary 

 in ground-colour from olive to dull brownish-buff, 

 and are thickly blotched and spotted with dark 

 brown and pale brown, with markings of purple 

 grey. Let me give one picture of a sitting Wood- 

 cock from the life. At the bottom of a moor stone, 

 shaded over by trailing brambles and tufts of 

 heather, the stone itself being covered with lichens 

 grey and brown, a litter of dead leaves and dry 

 grass has gathered, as if the wind sweeping through 

 the branches of the firs had brought them there to 

 rest. At the base of the stone dead twigs are 

 scattered about, some brown, where the bark has 

 peeled off them show light yellow ; some where 

 the minute fungi have settled on them are grey ; 



in fact there is a kind of network of dry twigs, 



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