124 INCREASE AND DISPERSAL OF BIRDS 



tioned above, that of birds formerly known only 

 as passing visitors, but of late remaining as 

 resident and nesting species, the most remark- 

 able instance is that of the woodcock. This bird 

 has been always, as far as we know, a regular 

 visitor on migration, just as it still is in Germany 

 and other parts of the continent of Europe; but 

 to-day it is something more, being now fairly 

 established as a breeding species all over Great 

 Britain. Yet, to go back to the mid- Victorian 

 era, a woodcock's nest was then a rarity indeed, 

 hardly to be credited without ocular demonstra- 

 tion. Some forty years ago I remember seeing 

 such a nest for the first time in central Perth- 

 shire, the motionless sitting bird hardly to be 

 distinguished from the brown leaves and bracken 

 around it save for its prominent bead-like eyes ; 

 at the same date they were found nesting yearly 

 in the birch-copses round a sea loch in West 

 Argyll. Now-a-days they nest, in all likelihood, 

 in every county in Scotland, in favourable 

 localities in considerable and increasing numbers. 

 When Yarrell wrote, in 1843, although he men- 

 tioned as an incontrovertible fact that the wood- 

 cock did nest in Great Britain, he thought it 

 necessary to cite particular instances in proof of 

 it. The earliest date given by him was 1832, 

 when four nests were found in Ross-shire, where 



