WADING BIRDS. 197 



serves, any curious and inquisitive deviations from the 

 rides and paths through them which a naturalist might 

 be inclined to make being forbidden, except you are one 

 of the privileged ones. Nevertheless, the frequency of 

 their breeding with us can be fully proved any summer's 

 evening by the numbers which may be seen as they leave 

 the woods for their feeding grounds. 



An interesting fact in the natural history of the wood- 

 cock has lately been cleared from a doubt which hung 

 around it ; I refer to the question whether it utters an 

 alarm note, or whistle, when flushed in covert. For 

 myself I had no more doubt of this fact, than that it 

 utters an ordinary call in feeding time, or during the 

 season of pairing, for I have repeatedly heard this note 

 of alarm when aroused. Many appear to have thought 

 that the bird rises mute, and strange to say many 

 sportsmen were of this opinion, but others of great ex- 

 perience, and who have combined the observant character 

 of the naturalist with the energy of the sportsman, have 

 clearly testified to the fact that an alarm note is uttered 

 by the bird on rising. 



In the beginning of January, 1859, a woodcock whose 

 plumage was entirely white was shot in Thoresby Park. 



The Common Snipe (S. gallinagd) is numerous wher- 

 ever the ground is suitable to its habits. It is chiefly a 

 winter visitor, though birds have been killed in summer, 

 and I have been told on good authority that its eggs 

 have been found on one or two occasions, but I have not 

 seen them. In severe winters they are very fearless, and 

 I have noticed them close to my own garden. During 

 a hard frost, when the ground was covered with snow, 

 I started one from a drain in a low-lying meadow, three 

 days together, and within a few yards of the same spot, 



