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TO TAKE WOODCOCKS WITH BIRDLIME, ETC. 



WOODCOCKS and snipes are difficult to discover, on 

 account of their lying close, and not resorting much to- 

 gether, especially in the day-time. 



The custom of woodcocks is usually to lie on hanks 

 hy hedges and ditches exposed to the sun ; and you may 

 take notice, that on a day after a moonshiny night, 

 they will suffer you to come nearer to them, and find 

 them, better than after a dark night. 



Snipes naturally lie by the sides of rivers, when all 

 plashes are frozen, and always with their heads up or 

 down the stream, and not across it. In order to find 

 them, a person must be expert in the knowledge of 

 their colours. 



In order to take woodcocks, &c., with birdlime, 

 provide yourself with sixty or seventy twigs, which 

 daub with birdlime neatly and smoothly ; and having 

 found their haunts, which you may discover by their 

 droppings, generally in low plashy places, and such as 

 have plenty of weeds, arid are not frozen in frosty 

 weather ; there set your twigs, more or less, as you think 

 fit, at about a yard distance one from the other, placing 

 them so as to stand sloping, in various ways; and if you 

 design to see sport, you must be concealed. If there be 

 any other open places near to that in which you have set 

 your twigs, beat them up, or else set twigs there too. 



