110 GRALLATORES. SCOLOPAX. Woopncock. 
wasting effects of very long-continued exertions. From the 
facts I am about to mention, it appears that they fly at a 
considerable altitude (as indeed do most birds when per- 
forming their migratory movements), to avoid, it is pre- 
sumed, the currents of air so frequent near the surface of 
the earth. A respectable person who lived upon the coast, 
and who, being a keen pursuer of wildfowl, was in the habit 
of frequenting the sea-shore at an early hour in the morning, 
assured me that he had more than once noticed the arrival 
of a flight of Woodcocks coming from the north-east just at 
day-dawn. His notice was first attracted by a peculiar 
sound in the air over his head, that, upon attending to, he 
found proceeded from birds descending in a direction almost 
perpendicular ; and which, upon approaching the shore, se- 
parated, and flew towards the interior. Some of them he 
observed to alight in the hedges immediately adjoining the 
coast ; these he pursued and shot, and which proved, as he 
surmised by the view he had of them as they flew past him, 
to be Woodcocks. The haunts selected by these birds, for 
their residence during the day-time, are usually the closest 
brakes of birch and other brushy underwood, and where the 
ground, from the deep shade, is nearly free from herbage ; 
and, for this reason, thick fir plantations of ten or twelve years’ 
growth are a favourite resort. In woods that are very exten- 
sive they are generally found, and abound most in thickets by 
the sides of open glades, or where roads intersect, as by these 
they pass to and from their feeding ground at evening and 
in the dawn of the morning. Unless disturbed, they remain 
quietly at roost upon the ground during the whole day, but 
as soon as the sun is wholly below the horizon, they are in 
full activity, and taking flight nearly at the same instant, 
leave the woods and cover for the adjoining meadows, or 
open land, over which they disperse themselves, and are fully 
engaged in search of food during the whole night. Advan- 
tage has long been taken of this regular mode of going to 
and returning from the feeding grounds, by the fowler, in 
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