WOODCOCK SHOOTING. 169 



to the coverts, which they sometimes do in flights or 

 numbers, they choose the year-old slopes, or they 

 betake themselves to the edges of the woods ; after- 

 wards they lie up in ordinary, as it were, in coverts 

 of from seven to ten years' growth." 



The woodcock is often supposed to make a flight 

 to Ireland from our shores, in seasons of severe frost, 

 the prevailing moisture of that clime being genial to 

 the conformation of the bird. It is well known they 

 leave us in numbers when a long, hard frost may have 

 prevailed. It seems to be an axiom in nature, 

 that the voracious animal is a solitary one. The 

 beasts of prey, for the most part, roam singly the 

 pathless wilderness in quest of victims; the carni- 

 vorous birds, who make their eyries on the moun- 

 tain-top, live and pair singly ; the huge monsters of 

 the deep, who feast on carrion, approve of no compe- 

 tition in blood; and thus, too, these smaller birds 

 and animals, who are greedy, or rapid of digestion, 

 appear averse to flocking together. This holds good 

 of the species we are describing ; and, indeed, it is a 

 fact, that one plashy brake, such as the bird loves, 

 will not contain more food than will support one of 

 these birds. Colonel Montague says : " The enor- 

 mous quantity these birds eat is scarcely credible : 

 indeed, it would be the constant labour of one person 

 to procure food (worms or the larvoe of insects) for 



two or three woodcocks The difficulty 



of collecting a sufficiency of such precarious aliment 

 determined us to try if bread and milk would not be 



