108 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



It was sprung by the dogs from the dead bracken 

 on the common. I see the dogs working, have in 

 mind the angle at which I took the bird, and how 

 I put it in my pocket and held it there, half afraid 

 that it might disappear ere I reached home. But 

 I can recall woodcock scenes of late years almost 

 as clearly. Nor is a woodcock badly missed soon 

 forgot. 



The woodcock never stays over the winter and 

 early spring to nest with us, though many years 

 ago a pair bred in a large wood on the other side 

 of the valley, a wood that was largely grubbed and 

 turned into farm land in the 'seventies. 1 Large and 

 very lonely, our wood seems well suited to the 

 nesting woodcocks, but other likely woods I know 

 are also without woodcocks in the breeding season, 

 though they have a fair number in autumn. There 

 is a wood near Bletchley which I have often visited, 

 where the bird is common in winter. With its 

 undergrowth of grass and fern and bramble, it looks 

 the very spot for woodcocks in the nesting time. 

 In the dell a stream trickles all the year through 

 the edge of the wood. Here they might bring their 

 fresh-hatched young. But though a dozen woodcock 

 may be in this wood in November, they will be 

 gone ere May. In a long period of years only one 

 woodcock's nest has been found. The man who 

 came upon it was searching for pheasants' eggs, 

 i " Wild Life in Hampshire Highlands," p. 272. 



