110 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



Few things about wild creatures are more puzzling 

 unless we credit them with special senses than 

 the way in which they can keep in touch with each 

 other. The woodcocks in midwinter are a good 

 instance. I am sure that, in large and thick coverts, 

 woodcocks at a regular hour each evening, will often 

 fly together to their feeding grounds. Woodcocks 

 will sometimes rouse themselves, when the air begins 

 to thicken and their day doze is over, and fly singly 

 to the scene of their supper, or rather their breakfast. 

 But it is not unusual to see them at this hour flying 

 straight and quick in couples. 



Whether such companions are actually paired or 

 mated I cannot say, though it is not hard to believe 

 that some woodcocks, like other birds, do live in pairs 

 through autumn and winter, even in a country where 

 they will not breed in the coming spring. I have 

 long thought it possible that mateship can exist 

 between birds not only out of the nesting season, 

 even between the autumn and the spring journeys, 

 if not during migration. The way in which birds 

 often feed, play, fly, and roost in couples during late 

 summer, autumn, and winter points to this. I am 

 not sure that mateship or the pair state must 

 always be lost even in the flock. At any rate, when 

 the flock breaks up at the close of winter a large 

 part of it may well dissolve into pairs. I hardly 

 suppose that when the pigeons and the peewits break 

 up, in March or February, the members of the flock 



