314 THE WOODCOCK. 
some stream debouching on a clayey basin converts this 
into a mossy swamp, through which its movement is only to 
be detected at the further end where, as if ashamed of its late 
sluggishness, it gushes out to resume its brawling descent. But 
swamp or stream, the water must be moving to please the 
Woodcock ; and, though there are exceptions to the rule, you will 
generally hunt in vain, mountain swamps and tarns, where there 
is no outlet and the water is stagnant, though all the surround- 
ings and adjuncts be everything, apparently, that the heart of 
Woodcock can desire. In England we find them beside 
little stagnant ditches and pools in covers; but in India I have 
seldom so seen them, having almost always flushed them in the 
neighbourhood of running water. | 
They are almost invariably solitary. I have flushed three or 
four out of one and the same clump of holly bushes not thirty 
yards in diameter; but it isfar more common to pick them up 
one by one along the course of some cover embowered stream at 
some distance from each other. At the same time, though 
thus /iving alone, they travel in _parties. To-day there will 
not be a Woodcock anywhere in the valley; next morning 
there are a dozen scattered about all over the place, at distances 
of two to four hundred yards from each other; unless indeed 
there be some enclosed garden or tempting patch of low thick 
prickly cover, where they think themselves safe from hostile 
birds and beasts, in which, though still keeping each other as 
much as may be at arm’s length, several will gather. A few 
days later andi not a bird is to be found. They haveldic= 
appeared, as they arrived, ez masse. They certainly always 
move by night, and for the most part feed chiefly during the 
hours of darkness; and, though they may sometimes be seen 
feeding in the afternoon, I have never myself witnessed this. 
Colonel Tickell says:—“ The Woodcock, it is well known, 
returns year after year, like the Chimney Swallow, to the same 
spot. One or two of them had thus for several winters attracted 
attention at the Residency, (Kathmandu, Nepal), and one after- 
noon, in October 1840, whilst seated lounging near an open 
window or glass door in that building, I descried a fine speci- 
men, looking very smooth and fat, with his rich chestnut 
plumage and pretty black bars strongly contrasted against 
the green turf, run along from under a species of lignum vite 
bush, and begin pecking and boring about in the grass. But 
pecking is not quite an applicable term to the movements of 
the bird, which appeared at every two or three steps to plunge 
his bill into the herbage and hold it there for a second or so, 
giving his head a quick shaking to right and left, as if endea- 
vouring to pierce the ground, and now and then looking up 
and allowing me to see his large black eye. Occasionally it 
appeared to nibble up and swallow some small object ; but its 
powers of deglutition are considerable, and the Woodcock will 
