HIS MODE OF FLIGHT. 
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glare of day. It is at twilight only that he seems fully awake, and 
runs briskly from one place to another. His usual gait is slow, 
hesitating, abrupt, and he never crosses any considerable space without 
making use of his wings. He flies very high, and with moderate 
quickness; very skilfully, for he threads his way without injury 
through the densest branches, and knows when to slacken or quicken his 
flight, when to wheel to right or left, when to mount or descend. But 
during the day he never rises into the upper regions of the atmosphere. 
When alarmed, he takes to his wings with a movement which produces 
a peculiar harsh whirr, well known to the sportsman. If he have been 
hunted close during the day, when he sets out on his foraging excur- 
sions in the evening he soars into the air almost vertically, and is up 
and away with all possible swiftness. Like many other birds, he can 
so swell and bristle his plumage as to look much larger than he really 
is. He advances sedately ; at long intervals he beats his wings ; in 
several respects he is more like an owl than one of tlie so-called " stilt- 
birds." It is a deplorable fact, which we cannot ignore, that two 
woodcocks no sooner encounter one another in the air — which is surely 
wide enough for both — than they fall to blows, and contend furiously. 
Not unfrequently they clutch and hold one another, so that neither can 
fly; and sometimes three woodcocks have been noticed to form in this 
way a group as intertangled as that of the Laocoon, and come to grief. 
Love is, we suppose, the motive principle of these aerial combats ; but 
it is curious that they begin during the annual migration — that is, 
before the usual pairing-time. At first they are sharp and brief; 
afterwards, when the birds have arrived in their summer-land, they are 
longer maintained ; and they generally take place at nightfall. 
Did the reader ever notice the likeness of the woodcock's head and 
bin to the stem and bowl of an old-fashioned pipe, such as Shakespeare 
might have used in the best parlour of the Mermaid, or, at a later date, 
Dickens' Joe Willet in the snug sanctum of the Maypole ? In the 
Elizabethan poets this resemblance is often noticed. As, for instance, 
by Ben Jonson : — 
Fastidious {smoking). Will your ladyship take any ? 
Saviolina. O peace, I pray you ; I love not the breath of a woodcock's head. 
