132 WOODCOCK. 



The Eev. W. T. Bree, in 1828, collected a number of instances of the Woodcock breeding 

 in this country. Two young ones were shot on May 19th., 1828, near Nuneaton. A 

 nest and four eggs were found in Ryton Wood, near Coventry, early in May, 1827, 

 but were deserted. Woodcocks were shot on April 9th., 1828, in some woods near Nuneaton. 

 Three other instances are also mentioned, as quoted from the local papers. 



We give the above as being some of the earliest records on this subject; the list might 

 now very readily be greatly extended, but we shall merely observe that Woodcocks' nests 

 are by no means very rare in many districts in the north, and that they have occurred 

 repeatedly even in the extreme south in Dorset and Devon, and more or less frequently 

 in nearly all the intervening counties. 



The Woodcock readily submits to confinement; in "The Naturalist," the Rev. R. A. Julian 

 says, "My father informs me a bird of this species, which had been pinioned, was kept 

 alive for several years at Widey Court, about three miles from this town, (Plymouth;) 

 it suffered, however, severely in dry summers, and was only sustained by strips of raw 

 meat, placed in a pan with mud. At other times it managed to shift for itself pretty well." 



Woodcocks vary much both in size and colour, depending probably on the effects of 

 age or sex, or both ; some sportsmen contend that there are three species, or at least 

 varieties, and specify the common ash-coloured one; the small red bird; and the large 

 black or dark one : these we believe to be all referrible to the one species varied by age 

 or sex. The subject is however yet open to investigation, though the opinions of naturalists 

 are generally such as we have expressed. The Rev. G. F. Dawson, in the "Zoologist," 

 however, has thus alluded to one of the varieties, and as the subject is one of some 

 interest, we extract it, leaving it to future observers to decide the point. 



"That there is a small variety of this bird, (which may eventually prove a distinct 

 species,) I have long been aware, as many sportsmen must be also, but it has never, I 

 believe, been generally noticed. Latham, indeed, speaks of two varieties of the common bird, 

 and even describes three; but mentions them more as occasional deviations, than as pos- 

 sessing any permanent points of difference ; yet the distinctive characters of the smaller bird 

 in question are beyond what we should ordinarily assign to an accidental variety. It is 

 more local, it is true, in its distribution; but independently of its smaller size, which 

 alone would form no criterion whereby to judge of its distinctness from the Common 

 Woodcock, which is well known to vary in size and weight most astonishingly ; it possesses 

 several other characteristics, which at once clearly distinguish it. In the family of 

 Scolopacidce generally, the females are not only larger than the males, but also of a 

 ' darker plumage ; the dark shades on the upper part of the back of the Common Woodcock, 

 for instance, being blacker, and the red of the lower portion of a deeper red in the females 

 than in the males; but in this small variety the colour of the males is much darker 

 than that of any females of the common sort; in fact, it is known in some parts of the 



