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THE WOODCOCK. 



Scolopax rusticola, Linn. 



Is a regular winter visitant, remaining about five months : 

 a few breed annually. 



Many more of these birds winter in this island than do in 

 England or Scotland. The general time of the appearance of 

 the woodcock in the north of Ireland is the month of October ; 

 but it has occasionally appeared in September. An octogenarian 

 sportsman has frequently, in his younger days, when this bird 

 was much more numerous than of late years, shot it in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Belfast in the last week of September, and once so 

 early as the 8th of that month : another sportsman, many years ago, 

 killed one here in a potato field, on the first day of partridge shoot- 

 ing — the 20th of September. By a third, a woodcock was shot on 

 the 21st of that month, in the heath at Ennishowen (Donegal). 

 According to notes of its appearance about Belfast during the 

 last twenty years, two only announce its presence so early as the 

 first week of October, and one of these relates to the fine dry 

 autumn of 1842. 



For some time after arrival, woodcocks are chiefly met with 

 among the heath on the mountains, and, indeed, whenever 

 the weather is open are to be found there by day. But in 

 favourite localities, where quite undisturbed, they will, during 

 the finest weather, remain in cover throughout the day, from the 

 date of their arrival to that of their departure. In some small 

 wooded glens near Belfast, where a gun was not permitted to be 

 fired, I have seen them daily, when I wished, during that period : 

 — from being unmolested, they admitted an approach within 

 a few paces, and were always seen quietly resting in the shade on 

 dry spots, generally beneath young spruce-fir trees, which were 

 branched nearly to the ground.* 



* Sir Humphrey Davy has remarked that : — " A laurel or a holly bush is a favour- 

 ite place for their repose : the thick and varnished leaves of these trees prevents the 



