WOODCOCK, SNIPE, AND PLOVER. 265 



day. This is generally the case when the nest has 

 been formed in or on some dry tuft or tussock, just 

 off the green soft belt of the moorland bogs. I am 

 inclined to believe that in southern counties the wood- 

 cock breeds early, for I was once near a female bird 

 and her brood that were running about in and out of 

 some half-melted patches of snow near the edge of 

 forest-lands that bordered on the moor. It was a 

 favourite haunt of mine, that breeding- place of the 

 woodcocks. Many a time have I been there when 

 the sun had got behind the great red fir-covered hill, 

 making the whole look like a huge purple mass, with 

 the mists rising gently above and around it, giving 

 the landscape a bloom like that on a bunch of grapes. 

 Fresh and cool it looked ; the moorland farm, with 

 blue smoke curling up from its quaint old chimneys, 

 and the last glint of light falling on the farm 

 meadows and the moor beyond them. From the 

 farmyard a wooded lane, or rather a moorland road, 

 ran round the foot of the hill. Down this covered 

 way the cocks would come flapping and shooting 

 into the moor beyond. At the foot of the hill, where 

 only the little trout- stream separated it from the 

 reclaimed meadow-land, the ground was so spongy 



