BIRDS. 



315 



and you flush others, here and there, and in all manner of places. 

 You climb up into some mmirais pas along a sheep-run. and a cock 

 rises from under the shadow of a boulder. You push on across the 

 marshy ground beside the loch, and the owl-like flight of the cock 

 again meets you on the way. You strike upon the course of the 

 bum and return home another way, and you find cock here and 

 there in the heather that flanks the wild watercoiurses. Tired bii'ds 

 seem to flutter here and there, and are difi"erent from the home-bred 

 birds. And yet they chiefly migrate. In some seasons they do not 

 leave in early autumn, but remain to be shot on the ground upon 

 which they were hatched out a few months earlier. But this is the 

 exception ; most of the home-bred birds migrate, and are replaced 

 by foreign flights of cock in October and November. Yet their 

 ground here — i.e. in Skye — abounds in springs, and seems suitable to 

 meet their wants at all seasons." ^ 



"Woodcocks," says the Kev. Mr. M'Connochie, speaking of his 

 immediate district, "are fairly common, nesting in the neighbour- 

 hood, and common on Montreathmont Moor. Their double call-note 

 is a familiar sound at fliojhtincr time." 



To save space and reiteration, allow me here to refer careful 

 readers to some remarks on climate in my introductory chapters, 

 and to add here that Woodcocks have again, in considerable 

 measure, moved further south in the spring and "early summer ' 

 of 1906, to date of May. In central districts we have not more 

 than half of the usual number of pairs of Woodcocks nesting, 

 and only about one-tenth of the number which nested in 1902 

 and 1904. But, on the other hand, I have received evidence that 

 never before have these birds bred so freely south of Forth as in 

 1905 and 1906. At Tyninghame my friend Mr. C. C. Tunnard, 

 now resident there as factor, is my exceUetU authority for that district. 

 More and more do I become confirmed in my own thorough belief, 

 oftentimes expressed before through the volumes of this series, that 

 where retrograde movements of birds' distribution can be traced — as 

 I hold I have traced those of several species — it is caused by altered 

 conditions and retrograde amenities of climate " crushing down " the 

 southern limit, then causing prompt congestion of lower latitudes, 

 and again resulting in further outbiu^ts along the "line of least 



* It appears to me to be still quite uncertain to what extent, and in what areas, 

 and during which seasons, Woodcocks are really migratory. In some parts of the 

 west of Scotland it appears to me to be quite a question deserving of greater and closer 



