WOODCOCKS AND SNIPES. 161 



rounded by plashy ground. It is worth notice that if a 

 woodcock is found at one of the covert springs, about dusk 

 in October, he is sure to be at the same place in the day- 

 time when the frost sets in. Each bird has its own 

 favourite, evergreen retreat, which it does not abandon till 

 the weather becomes open. A good beater well knows 

 that this bush should be struck smartly on the opposite 

 side from the gun, or the woodcock is warned, and flies 

 away hidden by the boughs. 



During a long-continued period of frost and snow, most 

 of the woodcocks leave the inlands for the oak and larch 

 belts on the coast, in order to feed upon the sea-worms 

 within tide water-mark. This sea-ground, of course, is 

 seldom much affected by frost, and is the last resource of 

 the woodcock during a storm. In the severe winter of 

 1838-9, hardly a stray cock was to be found in the inland 

 coverts after the first few weeks of hard frost. Numbers 

 were seen, dead and dying of starvation, among the planta- 

 tions which skirted the sea, even the sea-worm having 

 failed about the end of that long- continued storm. 



The passages of the woodcocks, either at evening flight, 

 or from one part of a coppice to another, when flushed, 

 seldom vary twenty yards. In beating large coverts, shots 

 who are aware of this have a great advantage. After once 

 seeing the bird fly, they can form a shrewd guess where to 

 place themselves next time. By facing the beaters, and 

 securing any opening that the cock may have skirted, they 

 will rarely be disappointed, as every woodcock will be 

 found next day at its former post, and take precisely its 



