THE GUN 111 



will all drop away singly to spring quarters ; in the 

 act of scattering they may often pair off. Is it not 

 likely that there are some paired rooks in the winter 

 flock? Seeing how easily unflocked birds can get 

 in touch with each other, or, having lost, can regain 

 touch, it is not hard to imagine that mateship may 

 exist in the crowd. 



How do the woodcocks, say a few birds, at most 

 a dozen, scattered by day through a large thick 

 covert such as ours, find companions just before dark 

 and fly together to the feeding ground ? True, they 

 sometimes lie close to each other in the dead fern 

 and undergrowth of the wood. Then it is easy to 

 understand how, rousing at the same minute in the 

 thickening light, they will fly off in company. But 

 isolated and scattered birds, far apart in high wood 

 or coppice, are differently placed ; and yet I think 

 they can, by some refinements of sense, remote and 

 obscure to us, easily get in touch. The solitary 

 woodcock, which you flush, and which flies wildly in 

 and out among the oaks till it alights haphazard 

 among the fern and dead leaves, there to squat till 

 nightfall, is not long lost to its companion. Nor has 

 it lost its bearings ; or, if it has lost them after that 

 startled flight to a part of the wood perhaps never 

 visited before, it will recover them when it awakes 

 fully and rises on the wing a few hours later at food 

 time. 



As the bee has a flower chart in her brain, so 



