WOODCOCK. 11 



keeper to the Duke of Devonshire, at Chats worth. The 

 bird which the boy first saw, was one of the parents con- 

 veying its offspring from the impending danger, across 

 the river at Ashford. Derby Mercury. Lastly, I may 

 add, that Mr. L. Lloyd, in his Field Sports of the North 

 of Europe, using the words of Mr. Grieff, who is a high 

 authority among Scandinavian sportsmen, says, " If, in 

 shooting, you meet with a brood of Woodcocks, and the 

 young ones cannot fly, the old bird takes them separately 

 between her feet, and flies from the dogs with a moaning 

 cry." 



In the spring of 1843, Mr. George Harrison, game- 

 keeper to the Earl of Lonsdale, found two Woodcocks'* 

 nests in Melkinthorpe woods near Lowther ; each nest 

 contained four eggs ; both broods were hatched out, and 

 went off. For several years, nests of these birds have 

 been found nearly in the same locality. These woods 

 are strictly preserved, and several young Woodcocks have 

 been seen during the present summer, 1845. 



Woodcock's are now known to have bred in York- 

 shire, in Nottinghamshire, in Norfolk, Sussex, and in 

 the Holt and Woolmer Forests of Hampshire : in the 

 former, two nests were found in one small piece of fir 

 plantation. 



At the meeting of the British Association held at 

 Cork in August 1843, Mr. Thompson of Belfast, called 

 attention to the circumstance of the nidification of the 

 Woodcock in Ireland, with especial reference to Tullamore 

 Park, in the county of Down, the seat of the Earl of 

 Roden. Here this species was first observed to remain 

 throughout the summer, and rear its young, in 1835 ; since 

 which period the numbers so remaining have been gradually 

 on the increase; and in the year 1843, twenty-two nests 



