WOODCOCKS 253 



for a moment or two with outspread wings in the smooth water 

 in the ship's wake ; and having rested themselves for a few 

 moments, continue their weary journey. 



Although those that remain here breed so early in the year, 

 the woodcocks that migrate do not leave England till the 

 end of March or beginning of April. In the wild extensive 

 woods of Sussex, I have often seen them in the evenings, about 

 the beginning of April, flying to and fro in chase of each other, 

 uttering a hoarse croaking, and sometimes engaging each other 

 at a kind of tilting-match with their long bills in the air. I 

 remember an old poaching keeper, whose society I used greatly 

 to covet when a boy, shooting three at a shot, while they were 

 engaged in an aerial tournament of this kind. 



There was a sporting turnpike-man (a rare instance of such 

 a combination of professions) on Ashdown forest, in Sussex, 

 who used to kill two or three woodcocks every evening for a 

 week or two in March and April — shooting the birds while he 

 smoked his pipe and drank his smuggled brandy and water 

 at his turnpike -gate, which was situated in a glade in the 

 forest, where the birds were in the habit of flying during the 

 twilight. 



I rather astonished an English friend of mine, who was 

 staying with me in Inverness-shire during the month of June, 

 by asking him to come out woodcock-shooting one evening. 

 And his surprise was not diminished by niy preparations for 

 our battue, which consisted of ordering out chairs and cigars 

 into the garden at the back of the house, which happened to 

 be just in the line of the birds' flight from the woods to the 

 swamps. After he had killed three or four from his chair, we 

 stopped murdering the poor birds, which were quite unfit to eat, 

 having probably young ones, or eggs, to provide for at home, 

 in the quiet recesses of the woods, along the banks of Loch Ness, 

 which covers afford as good woodcock -shooting as any in 

 Scotland. 



The female makes her nest, or rather, lays her eggs — for 

 nest she has none — in a tuft of heather, or at the f>.ot of a 

 small tree. The eggs are four in number, and resemble those 

 of a plover. They are always placed regularly in the nest, the 

 small ends of the eggs meeting in the centre. When disturbed 

 from her nest, she flutters away like a partridge, pretending to 



