WOODCOCKS AND SNIPES. 119 



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 stonn. In the severe winter of 1838-39, 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 plantations 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 them- 

 selves 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 former course, if sprung in 

 the same direction. Should the bush or tree be beaten on the 

 opposite side to that of the day before, the woodcock has like- 

 wise a well-known flight the reverse way. So certain is this 

 propensity, that, even in long narrow strips of plantation, 

 every woodcock flies to the side (unless prevented by bungling 

 irregular beating) a short time after being flushed the sharp 

 fliers a little farther on, and the tame proportionally nearer. 

 The flight of both can be easily calculated : and if there are 

 two pairs of experienced shots outside the wood, one pair for 

 the wild and the other for the tame birds, scarcely any escape 

 without being fired at. 



There are, however, many plantations, and these often the 

 most noted haunts of the woodcock, which it is impossible to 



