336 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



escape the guns for the most part, because their even distribution 

 does not favour their being looked for of set purpose. 



Comparatively few are killed in the pheasant coverts, even 

 if many are seen. The guns are set in the line of flight of the 

 pheasants, and whatever set purpose a migrant woodcock may 

 have by night, his only purpose by day is to have no purpose 

 at all. You can never trust him to go a hundred yards in any 

 one direction, and for this reason he offers more chances to the 

 beaters, who have no guns, than to the sportsmen who have 

 them. On the contrary, when the frost comes early and drives 

 the birds to those shores that know the Gulf Stream, then the 

 woodcocks congregate in coverts, and are made the special 

 objects of the sportsmen's attentions. The longer the frosts 

 and snows last the more 'cock are killed, and sometimes it 

 happens that a stay is made to these exterminating proceedings 

 by the abject poverty and weakness of the birds. This has 

 occasionally been the case in Ireland, and the fact that these 

 birds were caught by frost and snow on one side, and by the 

 Atlantic on the other, shows that migration is not always 

 salvation to the migrant. Just why the birds became so weak 

 as not to be able to go forward to Spain or Africa, it is difficult 

 to say. But possibly those that get starved in this way are 

 the late arrivals that find themselves weakened by much flying 

 when they first arrive on the Irish coast, and without food can 

 go no farther. Probably those already there when the food 

 begins to get scarce do go on. 



Whether the woodcock are generally increasing or not, no 

 doubt there are more home breeding 'cock than formerly. 

 There is scarce a boggy birch wood in Scotland that has not 

 its young woodcock in August, and obviously these birds are 

 bred there. They are not then much good for the table, and 

 if sportsmen would make a rule not to shoot them they would 

 probably increase much faster than they do. Most of the 

 foreign woodcocks come to us in October and November. Then 

 they appear to settle to rest on the first land they see, but 

 they are to be found there only for a few hours, and go on and 

 distribute themselves over their favourite country very quickly. 



