WOODCOCK. 105 



the hens are forward with egg, I myself, when I was a sports- 

 man, have often experienced. It cannot indeed be denied, 

 but that now and then we hear of a woodcock's nest, or young- 

 hedgerow, or little quiet pasture, two or three of them, that have with- 

 drawn from the main flocks, and there associate with the blackbird 

 and the thrush. " 



The woodcocks arrive in Great Britain in flocks ; some of them in 

 October, but not in great numbers till November and December. They 

 generally take advantage of the night, being seldom seen to come before 

 sunset. 



The time of their arrival depends considerably on the prevailing winds; 

 for adverse gales always detain them, they not being able to struggle with 

 the boisterous squalls of the Northern Ocean. The greater part of them 

 leave this country about the latter end of February, or beginning of 

 March, always pairing before they set out. They retire to the coast, and, 

 if the wind be fair, set out immediately ; but, if contrary, they are often 

 detained in the neighbouring woods and thickets for some time. So well 

 skilled are these birds in atmospherical changes, that the instant a fair 

 wind springs up, they seize the opportunity ; and where the sportsman 

 has seen hundreds in one day, he will not find even a single bird the next. 

 At the Landsend, Cornwall, every fisherman and peasant can tell, from, 

 the temperature of the air, the week, if not the day, on which the wood- 

 cocks will arrive on the coast. They come in prodigious flocks, which 

 reach the shore at the same time, and from their state of exhaustion, 

 induced by their long flight, they are easily knocked down, or caught by 

 dogs. A short respite soon invigorates them, so that they are enabled to 

 pursue their inland course, but till thus recruited they are an easy prey, 

 and produce no small profit to those who live in the neighbourhood. 



Mr Warner informs us, that " We were told at Truro, as a proof of 

 the definitive time of their arrival, that a gentleman then had sent to the 

 Landsend for several brace, to be forwarded to him for a particular 

 occasion. This correspondent acquainted him in answer, that no wood- 

 cocks had yet arrived ; but that, on the third day from his writing, if 

 the weather continued as it then was, there would be plenty. The state 

 of the atmosphere remained unchanged, the visitors came as it was 

 asserted they would, and the gentleman received the number of birds he 

 had ordered. " 



It seems quite certain that the migratory birds usually return to their 

 former haunts. The following well authenticated circumstance is related 

 by Bewick, on the authority of Sir John Trevelyan, Bart. " In the winter 

 of 1797," says he, " the gamekeeper of E. M. Pleydell, Esq. of Watcombe, 

 in Dorsetshire, brought him a woodcock, alive and unhurt, which he had 

 caught in a net set for rabbits. Mr Pleydell scratched the name upon 

 a bit of thin brass, bent it round the woodcock's leg, and let it fly. In 

 December, the next year, Mr Pleydell shot this bird, with the bras.3 

 about its leg, in the same wood where it had been first caught." We 

 caught a swallow, which built in the corner of a window, tied a silk 

 thread about one of its limbs, and set it at liberty. Next year the same 

 corner was taken possession of by a pair of swallows. We caught them, 

 and found that one had still round its limb the piece of thread which 

 we had tied on the preceding year. ED. 



