120 BRITISH BIRDS. 



The Woodcock is migratory, and, in different 

 seasons, is said to inhabit every climate: it leaves 

 the countries bordering upon the Baltic in the 

 autumn and setting in of winter, on its route to- 

 this country. They do not come in large flocks, 

 but keep dropping in upon our shores singly, or 

 sometimes in pairs, from the beginning of October 

 till December. They must have the instinctive 

 precaution of landing only in the night, or in dark 

 misty weather, for they are never seen to arrive; 

 but are frequently discovered the next morning in 

 any ditch which affords shelter, and particularly 

 after the extraordinary fatigue occasioned by the 

 adverse gales which they often have to encounter 

 in their aerial voyage. They do not remain near 

 the shores to take their rest longer than a day, 

 but commonly find themselves sufficiently recruited 

 in that time to proceed inland, to the very same 

 haunts which they left the preceding season.* In 

 temperate weather, they retire to the mossy moors, 

 and bleak mountainous parts of the country ; but 

 as soon as the frost sets in, and the snow begins 

 to fall, they return to lower and warmer situations, 

 where they meet with boggy grounds and springs, 



to notice that, in cooking it, the entrails are not drawn, but roasted 

 within the bird, whence they drop out with the gravy upon slices of 

 toasted bread, and are relished as a delicious kind of sauce. 



* In the winter of 1797, the gamekeeper of E. M. Pleydell, Esq., 

 of Whatcombe, in Dorsetshire, brought him a Woodcock, which he 

 had caught in a net set for rabbits, alive and unhurt. Mr. P. scratched 

 the date upon a bit of thin brass, and bent it round the Woodcock's 

 leg, and let it fly. In December, the next year, Mr. Pleydell shot 

 this bird, with the brass about its leg, in the very same wood where it 

 had been first caught by the gamekeeper. 



(Communicated by Sir John Trevelyan, Bart.) 



