the Woodcock in Ireland. 347 



purpose of breeding, as they must have arrived in the spring 

 from other localities ; for those ^vho shot in the covers till 

 February declare that they did not know of a single woodcock 

 being then left in them, and had there been two or three the 

 keeper must have been aware of it*." In the ' Magazine of 

 Natural History' for 1832 (vol. v. p. 570) it is stated in con- 

 nexion with their having bred every season for the few 

 years preceding in the Moodlands about Darnaway Castle, the 

 seat of the Earl of Moray, " that when the winter set in, the 

 woodcock almost entirely deserted the Darnaway forest.'* 

 The following extract from an admirable memoir by M. Necker 

 on the birds of the neighbourhood of Geneva, illustrates this 

 further. " La Becasse [Scolopax rusticola) ouvre la marche 

 des oiseaux voyageurs, et c'est deja vers la fin de Fevrier ou 

 le commencement de Mars que Pon voit aiTiver dans les fo- 

 r^ts au pied des montagnes, ces troupes qui viennent proba- 

 blement de I'ltalie, de PEspagne, et du midi de la France ; 

 ou elles ont trouve un hiver doux, une terre humide et non 

 durcie par les gelees ; elles attendent que les neiges des mon- 

 tagnes basses soient fondues, et nous quittent encore au mois 

 d'Avril pour nicher dans les lieux eleves et froidsf." But 

 proof is wanted, and it would be difficult to be procured, whe- 

 ther the woodcocks generally, that breed in the British Islands, 

 constantly abide therein, or are of that vast number which 

 leave the more southern countries in the spring in search 

 of suitable climates in which to rear their broods, and where 

 they remain during the summer only. When, however, I con- 

 sider that the climate of Ireland of late was not unsuitable 

 to this bird at any period of the year, and as it became the 

 more suitable, that in localities otherwise favourable, the num- 

 ber of woodcocks remaining during summer increased the 

 more ; that in their chief haunts the species was always to be 

 met with in the interv^al between which the young broods had 

 strength enough to wing their way to more southern coun- 



* In the spring of 1836 numbers of woodcocks were met with in Tulla- 

 morc park after the ordinary time that the eggs are considered to he laid. 

 On the 7th of April the gamekeeper killed 4J, and on the 1 1th 3i brace of 

 these birds. In such quantity they had never been known to remain so 

 late. 



t Memoires d'Histoire Naturelle, &c. de Geneve, torn, ii. part 1, p. 35. 



2 A 2 



