CHAPTER LXII. 



WOODCOCK SHOOTING. 



* * * Hark ! that quest proclaims 

 The woodcock's haunt. Again ! now joining all, 

 They shake the echoing wood with tuneful notes. 

 I heard the sounding wing ; but down the wood 

 He took his flight. I meet him there anon. 

 As fast I press to gain the wish' d for spot, 

 On either side my busy spaniels try : 

 At once they wheel at once they open loud, 

 And the next instant flush th' expected bird. 

 Right up he darts amongst the mingling boughs ; 

 But bare of leaves, they hide not from my view 

 His fated form ; and ere he can attain 

 Th' attempted height, with rapid flight to cleave 

 The yielding air, arrested by the shot, 

 With shatter'd wing revers'd and plumage fair, 

 Wide scatt'ring in the wind, headlong he falls." 



Fowling : a Poem. Book iv. 



THOUGH scarcely within the category wild-fowl, the woodcock 

 (Scolopax rusticola) is generally classed with migratory water-birds, 

 and forms so attractive an object to the English sportsman ; and so 

 frequently crosses the path of the aquatic fowler, that to exclude all 

 notice of it from a treatise of this kind would be a grave omission. 

 It is not, therefore, with the object of increasing the bulk of the 

 present volume that the subject of the woodcock is introduced, but 

 because our labours would be considered very imperfect unless the 

 various methods employed for capturing* this interesting* bird were 

 discussed in these pages : more especially as it is a bird of favourite 

 pursuit by all sportsmen, affording such unexpected opportunities, 

 and in so high esteem as a table luxury, that there is truly a peculiar 

 charm attached to the sport of woodcock-shooting. There is this 

 important resemblance to wild-fowl in the habits of the woodcock 

 it is to be found in every land,* and affords infinite variety of 

 amusement to the fowler and the sportsman. 



* " Woodcocks are to be had all over the world, in the ancient as in the 

 new ; in Siberia as in Senegal from the Land's-end to John o' Groat's house from 



