68 VARIETIES OF SHOOTING. 



pitched. In my experience I never have seen any instance 

 of the sort in woodcocks. Woodcocks, even paired for the 

 purpose of breeding, when flushed, pursue courses as nearly 

 opposite as possible. 



"A woodcock is the most silent bird I know. Other 

 game birds very generally call when flushed a black-cock, 

 hotvever, very seldom, except in covert. A woodcock occa- 

 sionally, though very seldom indeed, calls. When I have 

 heard him do so, it has generally been at the approach either 

 of night or of a heavy fall of snow. The call is not musical, 

 though magically game-like once heard never again to be 

 mistaken for the call of any other bird. In flight-time at night 

 and morning they constantly call, and may be heard a long 

 time before they are seen. 



" In this country woodcocks are found either in covert or 

 in long heather. A strange peculiarity exists with regard 

 to the finds for woodcocks in covert, generally on the 

 sunny side, on banks facing the south-east ; in the heather, 

 very nearly invariably the reverse is the fact you won't 

 find one cock in long heather, on the sunny side of a 

 heathery hill, for some hundreds you will find on the side 

 which never sees the sun in the winter time. On those 

 shaded hill-sides, and in the adjacent heathery and brush- 

 wooded burns, I have enjoyed most excellent sport. 



"I think a woodcock is generally more easily brought 

 down in covert than in the open. In covert you take great 

 pains to do it well; in the open you imagine the shot to be a 

 much more simple one than it is." 



A south-country sportsman has also given us the results 

 of his experience in the same periodical in the following 

 terms : 



" On bright moonlight nights woodcocks all leave the 

 thick coverts of wood and copse about the hour of twilight, 

 and betake themselves to the open downs and hills, meadows, 

 fields, and plains, to feed, returning in the morning as daylight 

 appears to their former coverts. At the head of a long wooded 

 valley, in the twilight if a moonlight night, the woodcocks 

 may be seen, many of them together, to play about like 

 swallows in the air at about the height of a church tower for 



