SCOLOPACID^. 321 



of a hill in the Dartmoor country. The rabbits were bolting? badly, and 

 the ferrets were Ij'ing up in an earth, where we were tediously kept for 

 upwards of an hour. The ground round the earth was quite bare, save 

 for one little tump of furze close at hand. We were stretched on the 

 ground listening at the holes in turn for any intimation of the ferret's 

 whereabouts, and we chanced accidentally to give this tump of furze a 

 kick, when up sprang a Woodcock which had been lying close in it all 

 the time. We jumped up, seized our gun, and cocking a barrel fired 

 rather hastily at the bird, striking it, but not sufficiently to bring it 

 down, as it liew on over the j^lantatious, and was finally lost to view 

 when heading in the direction of the house, half a mile distant in the 

 valley below. The next moi'uing, while we were at breakfast, some one 

 opened the hall-door, and we heard an exclamation, and on going to see 

 what was the matter, found on one of the steps a Woodcock fluttering 

 with a broken wing — our bird, we thought, of the previous afternoon. 

 Our next story has reference to a Woodcock's feigning death. It was 

 told us by a friend who used to shoot in a very favourite Woodcock-cover 

 in Cornwall. One day, having had good sport, bagging several couple, 

 he called at the house of an old lady who owned the wood, as he was on 

 his way home, to leave her a present. He rang the front-door bell ; 

 the servant came : " My compliments to your mistress, and I wish to 

 give her a couple of Cocks ;" and then his man took one out of the bag 

 and handed it to the servant ; but, on taking out the second, as he re- 

 laxed his grasp to put it into the servant's hands, the bird gave a sudden 

 start and flew away ! My friend had his gun loaded, and fired at the 

 Cock as it was going over the house, dropping it on the roof. " There .'" 

 said he to the servant, " you tvill find the other ^ip on the hads." Our 

 own Woodcock-covers are veiy furz)- and full of brambles, and in working 

 through them we were continually losing our silk pocket-handkerchiefs, 

 which were dragged from our pockets by the thorns. These we some- 

 times found on going subsequently the same beats. One frosty morning 

 we perceived a small white patch shining like silver in the sun on the 

 other side of a narrow valley, and crossing over discovered it to be one of 

 our white silk handkerchiefs frozen stift' as a board and covered with 

 hoar-frost. It was resting on the tops of some dwarf furze, and as Ave 

 lifted it uj) we flushed a fine Cock which was squatting beneath it, which 

 we marked into the cover and bagged. 



On Lundy Island we saw a Woodcock shot when it was sitting on the 

 top of a stone wall, and once in a cover in North Devon a Woodcock 

 wiiich had boon flushed several times alighted on a limb of a large Scotch 

 fir some ten feet above the ground. 



Woodcocks lie very dead in the covers, and are often passed both by 

 the beaters and by the s])aniels. We had a small strip of jdantation 

 which invariably lield a Cock, and Ave went to it one day Avith a spaniel 

 we had on tiial. The dog worked it up and down, and notliing rose, and 

 Ave then Avent and tapped an accustomed busli Avitli our gun-barrel, wlieu 

 immediately a Cock Avas flushed, which avo sliot. We have often detected 

 a Woodcock on the ground — nut aJi easy tiling to do, as the plumage of 



Y 



