THE WOODCOCK. 243 



informed me in 1839, that many years previously he had known 

 twenty-two brace of woodcocks to be killed there in a day by one 

 gun. About thirty years before that time, he was in attendance 

 on Lord O'Neill, at Killarney, when his lordship and Major Hig- 

 ginson killed, to their own two guns, in three or four days, 173 

 brace.* A sporting friend visiting at Ross, county of Galway, in 

 the winter of 1842 or 1843 mentions that seventy brace were 

 killed by five guns during three days' shooting about Christmas ; 

 — twenty-seven and a half brace were bagged on one of the days. 

 It was considered a bad year for woodcocks in that quarter. 

 There is still, he states, excellent cock-snooting in many of the 

 county Galway covers. 



Departure. — In March the woodcock generally takes its depar- 

 ture from the north of Ireland, and is rarely seen at the end of 

 the month; so late as April the 5th, 1833, two appeared near 

 Belfast; and in 1836, the gamekeeper at Tollymore Park shot 

 ^bur and a half brace on the 7th, and three and a half on the 

 11th of April — much the latest migratory birds he had ever met 

 with. At Ennishowen, in the most northern portion of the 

 island, a sportsman assures me that he has seen woodcocks in the 

 heath when April was far advanced : here also they have occurred 

 particularly early in the season. But for what has previously 

 been stated (p. 238), we might expect this to be one of the first 

 parts of Ireland for them to touch at in autumn, and, consequently, 

 one of the last for them to leave in spring. 



Woodcocks in May. 



The island of Islay, off the western coast of Scotland, has been noted 

 for furnishing good woodcock-shooting, of the truth of which I had 



* Daniel, in his ' Rural Sports' (vol. iii. p. 172), mentions, but without statiug time* 

 or place, that " in Ireland, the Earl of Clermont shot fifty brace in a day," adding, 

 " but then it should be premised, that such was the abundance of these birds as to be 

 sold in some parts (for instance near Ballyshannon, in the county of Donegal) for 

 one penny each and the expense of powder and shot." Ravensdale Park, one of 

 the seats of Viscount Clermont (a title lately become extinct) at the base of the high 

 mountains between Newry and Dundalk, is apparently one of the finest localities 

 I have ever seen for woodcocks when driven from the mountains by frost or snow. 



* The volume whence this is extracted (the octavo edition) was published in 180". 

 R 2 



