562 WOODCOCK. 



bill, collecting- their food. The eye is not called into use, for, like the 

 mole, they actually feed beneath the surface ; and by the sensibility of 

 the instrument which is thrust into the soft earth, not a worm can 

 escape that is within reach. The eyes of the Woodcock are large in 

 proportion, and, like those of some other nocturnal birds, are the better 

 calculated for collecting- the faint rays of light in the darkened vales 

 and sequestered woodlands, in their nocturnal excursions ; thus en- 

 abling them to avoid trees and other obstacles, which continually occur. 

 The nerves in the bill, as in that of the duck tribe, are numerous, and 

 highly sensible of discrimination by the touch. 



A Woodcock in our menagerie very soon discovered and drew forth 

 every worm in the ground, which was dug up, to enable it to bore ; and 

 worms put into a large garden -pot, covered with earth five or six inches 

 deep, are always cleared by the next morning, without one being left. 



The enormous quantity of worms that these birds eat, is scarcely 

 credible ; indeed, it would be the constant labour of one person to 

 procure such food for two or three Woodcocks. The difficulty of col- 

 lecting a sufficiency of such precarious aliment, determined us to try if 

 bread and milk would not be a good substitute ; and we found that by 

 putting clean washed worms into that mess, the bird soon acquired a 

 taste for this new food, and will now eat a bason of bread and milk in 

 twenty-four hours, besides the worms it can procure. 



It is observable, that previous to the flirting or rising of a Wood- 

 cock from the ground, which, in the language of sportsmen, is termed 

 flushing, the tail is thrown up in a perpendicular direction, and by 

 spreading the feathers, the white tips all appear distinct. 



Few naturalists at present will be found to doubt the actual migra- 

 tion and re-migration of birds ; and that many repair annually to the 

 same haunts and same nest, to breed. So many instances of this have 

 been related upon good authority, that it scarcely requires strengthening 

 by further proof ; but a circumstance so well authenticated as that 

 related by Mr. Bewick, on the authority of Sir John Trevelyan, Bart., 

 is deserving of notice. " In the winter of 1797," says he, " the game- 

 keeper of E. M. Pleydell, Esq., of Watcombe, in Dorsetshire, brought 

 him a Woodcock alive and unhurt, which he had caught in a net set 

 for rabbits. Mr. Pleydell scratched the date upon a bit of thin brass, 

 bent it round the Woodcock's leg, and let it fly. In December, the 

 next year, Mr. Pleydell shot this bird, with the brass about its leg, in 

 the same wood where it had been first caught." 



The same author mentions, from the same authority, that a white 

 woodcock was seen three successive winters in Penrice Wood, Gla- 

 morganshire.* 



