235 
THE WOODCOCK. 
Scolopax fusticola, Linn. 
Is a regular winter visitant, remaining about five months ; 
a few breed annually. 
Many more of these birds winter in this island than do in 
England or Scotland. The general time of the appearance of 
the woodcock in the north of Ireland is the month of October ; 
but it has occasionally appeared in September. An octogenarian 
sportsman has frequently, in his younger days, when this bird 
was much more numerous than of late years, shot it in the neigh- 
bourhood of Belfast in the last week of September, and once so 
early as the 8th of that month : another sportsman, many years ago, 
killed one here in a potato field, on the first day of partridge shoot- 
ing — the 20th of September. By a third, a woodcock was shot on 
the 21st of that month, in the heath at Ennishoweu (Donegal). 
According to notes of its appearance about Belfast during the 
last twenty years, two only announce its presence so early as the 
first week of October, and one of these relates to the fine dry 
autumn of 1842. 
Eor some time after arrival, woodcocks are chiefly met with 
among the heath on the mountains, and, indeed, whenever 
the weather is open are to be found there by day. But in 
favourite localities, where quite undisturbed, they will, during 
the finest weather, remain in cover tlrroughout the day, from the 
date of their arrival to that of their departure. In some small 
wooded glens near Belfast, where a gun was not permitted to be 
fired, I have seen them daily, when I wished, during that period : 
— from being unmolested, they admitted an approach within 
a few paces, and were always seen quietly resting in the shade on 
dry spots, generally beneath young spruce-fir trees, which were 
branched nearly to the ground.* 
* Sir Humphrey Davy has remarhed that : — “ A laurel or a holly bush is a favour- 
ite place for their repose ; the thick and varnished leaves of these trees prevents the 
