LITTLE-KNOWN HABITS OF THE WOODCOCK. 435 
writers since his time have discussed the subject. Gilbert White, 
on reading Scopoli’s statement “pullos rostro portat fugiens ab 
hoste,’ was incredulous. ‘‘ But candour,” he added, ‘“ forbids me 
to say absolutely that any fact is false, because I have never been 
witness to such a fact. I have only to remark that the long 
unwieldy bill of the Woodcock is perhaps the worst adapted of any 
among the winged creation for such a feat of natural affection.” 
Had Scopoli omitted the word “‘rostro” his statement might have 
been less open to criticism, the fact being that not one of the 
subsequent observers who have confirmed his assertion that 
Woodecocks do carry their young agrees with him that they are 
carried in the bill. Nor do they upon this point agree amongst 
themselves. 
The late L. Lloyd, in his ‘Scandinavian Adventures,’ wrote, 
“Tf in shooting you meet with a brood of Woodcocks, and the 
young ones cannot fly, the old bird takes them separately between 
her feet, and flies from the dogs with a moaning ery.” Again, in 
his ‘Game Birds and Wildfowl of Sweden and Norway’ (p. 194), 
he thus refers to the habit as observed by a friend :— 
“Once during a hare-hunt,’ writes my friend, M. Anders Oterdahl, 
‘I myself shot a Woodcock, flushed by the dogs, and when flying at about 
six feet from the ground, that was bearing an unfledged young one in her 
claws. It seemed to me she grasped it with her feet, one foot having hold 
of one wing and the other foot of the other. Though, owing to intervening 
branches, I did not observe the old bird when she rose, I was fortunately 
so near to her as clearly to see what I have stated. Afterwards I found 
two other young ones under a neighbouring bush, where they had retreated 
for safety.’ When the above story appeared in my former work, ‘ Scandi- 
navian Adventures,’ it was looked on by many, both in Sweden and England, 
as a fable: but, from the number of similar instances since recorded, it is 
now, I believe, received as an admitted fact in both countries that Wood- 
cocks, when their young are in jeopardy, not unfrequently thus convey them 
to a place of safety.” 
One of the brothers Stuart, who, in the second volume of the 
‘Lays of the Deer Forest,’ have given such a graphic account of 
the wild animals of Scotland, from personal observation of their 
habits, thus refers to the bird now under discussion :— 
“The Woodcock breeds to a considerable extent in most parts of the 
forest, and also in other woods of Morayshire, the Aird of Inverness, and 
on the Dee, the Don, the Spey, and other parts of the Highlands, but, 
