Woodcock. 427 



colour, barred and spotted, and crossed with, black or very dark 

 brown. Woodcocks frequently arrive on the east coast in the 

 autumn migration, very much exhausted, and will drop immedi- 

 ately on reaching land in the nearest available cover, or even at 

 the base of the rocks on the shore. It is curious how they always 

 seem to arrive two or three days after the Golden Crested Wren, 

 hence dubbed the 'Woodcock Pilot.'* Gilbert White has been 

 censured for refusing to credit what he called the improbable 

 story of the naturalist Scopoli as to the Woodcock, when 

 alarmed for the safety of its young, carrying them off in its beak, 

 'pullos rostro portat fugiens ab hoste;' for he considered the long 

 and unwieldy beak of that bird very ill adapted for such a 

 purpose. But in truth our good old English naturalist was quite 

 right in his opinion, for though the Woodcock does, beyond 

 question, remove its young when in danger, it is not with the beak, 

 but either with the feet, grasping the young bird in its claws, as 

 an owl will carry off a mouse, or else supporting it with both 

 feet and bill, which that bird could well do, as it always flies with 

 bill pointed downwards to the earth, or else pressed between the 

 thighs. This has been witnessed over and over again of late 

 years, and for instances and further particulars on this very 

 interesting subject I refer to the pages of Bewick, Yarrell, 

 Lloyd, St. John, Stevenson, Harting, Howard Saunders, and, above 

 all, Sir Kalph Payne-Gallwey. In Sweden it is called Mor-kulla. 

 or ' Moor-maid/ and it is commonly supposed there that there 

 are two species, the Common and the ' Stone Woodcock,' the 

 latter known in Germany as the Stein- Schneppe, and described as 

 of darker colour, and as nearly one-third less in size than the 

 other. But it would appear that this divergence is only attribu- 

 table to the difference of sex, the male bird, as Mr. Cecil Smith 

 has pointed out, being much smaller than the female. Indeed, 

 Yarrell says a young male shot in October will sometimes 

 weigh only 7 oz., while an old female will probably weigh 

 as much as 14 or 15 oz. It is only of late years that it has 

 been known to breed in England, but now that attention has 



c " Cordeaux's ' Birds of the Humber District,' p. 136. 



