B18. THE WOODCOCK. 
and there rising higher than usual, turn back over the trees 
and again drop in them higher up. Ten or twelve birds to two 
guns in a morning is quite an unusually fine bag, so it must | 
not be supposed that they lie thick as a rule, and yet in parti- 
cular parts of the hills five or six are at times shot out of one 
tiny “shola,” not perhaps above thirty yards wide, and nota 
quarter of a mile in length. In thus beating, numbers of hares 
(the large Lepus nigricollts,) Wood-Pigeon (Palumbus elphinstonit) 
and Quail are also flushed, and not unfrequently Grey Jungle- 
Fowl and a few Wood-Snipe, the latter specially towards the 
bottom, where almost all these so/as end in more or less of a 
swamp in which both Common and Pintail Snipe are very 
often also found, so that a beat for Woodcock of this kind does 
afford very pretty sport. 
During the cold season the Woodcock is, I think, mute. At 
no time have I ever heard it utter any cry that I can remem- 
ber ; but Mr. Frederic Wilson, writing of them in their summer 
haunts, in the higher ranges near the snow, where they breed, 
remarks :— 
“At this season they are seen towards dusk about the open 
elades and borders of the forest on the higher ridges, flying 
rather high in the air in various directions, and uttering a loud 
wailing cry.” 
According to European authors, the Woodcock in the 
summer, during its morning and evening flights, utters a very 
peculiar call-note, first one or two snorts, “a. hollow, coarse, 
somewhat lengthened nasal sound, followed by a. short, fine 
sharp sort of whistle, which, when one is accustomed to it, may 
be heard to a considerable distance.” : 
In winter one sees and hears little of these flights at dusk, 
and just before daylight which characterise the species in the 
summer. As a rule they lie hid all day within fifty yards of 
their feeding ground, to which towards dusk they toddle down, 
as far as I have been able to see, never flying a yard for weeks 
together unless disturbed ; but though I have never myself seen 
it, I have been told, by reliable persons, of Woodcock at Simla 
flying up in certain years, regularly every evening in November 
or December from the valleys below, towards the top of the 
highest hill (Jakko), though what they wanted in the absolutely 
dry scrub there no one can guess. Still quite at the top I have 
- known of ten or eleven (possibly a flight that had just alighted) 
being found, and five killed. 
OF THE nidification of this species in the Himalayas, though 
Hodgson, Wilson, Duff and many others have found the nests, 
the only account on record is that by my friend the late Mr, 
A. Anderson. He says, writing of a trip in Kumaun :— 
“On the 30th of June I turned my face towards the snows in 
another direction, determined to consider my expedition a 
