THE EUROPEAN WOODCOCK IN 

 AMERICA 



The question is sometimes asked whether the 

 European Woodcock occurs in America, and the 

 answer to be given to such question is that the 

 appearance of our Woodcock on the other side of 

 the Atlantic is of such very rare occurrence that the 

 instances which have been recorded may be counted 

 on one's fingers. 



I have been at some pains to search for such 

 records, and a summary of them will be, I think, of 

 interest to naturalists and sportsmen. It may be 

 observed, en passant, that the Faroe Islands lie 

 beyond the western limit of the ordinary range of 

 this bird, and, so far as I am aware, it has only once 

 been met with there. This was on the island of 

 Naalsoe on November 15, 1852 (see Miiller, 

 Fcsroernes Fuglefauna, p. 26 ; and Feilden, Birds 

 of the Faroe Islands, Zoologist, 1872). In the 

 British Islands the extreme western limit of its 

 range is probably Achill Island, off the coast of 

 Mayo. 



The earliest report which I have been able to 

 find of the appearance and capture of a European 

 Woodcock in America is in The Ibis for 1862, where 

 (at p. 284) in a notice of the stuffed birds which 



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