THE WOODCOCK. 
239 
powder in the pans of our guns, which were of the best descrip- 
tion, but with the flint locks of that time, so damp that it would 
not ignite. 
A rather singular circumstance occurred to a friend when cock- 
shooting at Eedhall (Antrim) : he fired at a woodcock, which 
alone he saw, but on going to the spot where it fell he found, to 
his surprise, a fine cock-pheasant dead at its side — the keeper, 
who was present, observed the latter bird to fly up within range 
of the gun just at the moment the trigger was pulled at the 
woodcock. This species is the favourite bird of pursuit with 
trained Peregrine falcons, as particularly noticed in the account of 
the latter, in the first volume of this work. The woodcock is 
very expert in escaping the sportsman; seeing whom, when 
sprung, it wheels or turns most adroitly to avoid him. T have 
known an old sportsman to be much annoyed by his failing to 
get a shot at one which, for a considerable part of a winter, 
frequented a certain portion of a glen on his property, near a 
bridge. The bird, on being raised, always wheeled suddenly 
under the arch, and escaped. 
On examination of the stomachs of thirteen woodcocks, killed 
at different periods and in every kind of weather, from October to 
March, one was found to contain only small pebbles ; ten, vege- 
table matter, chiefly ConfervcE (in one instance an aquatic moss) ; 
several of them worms of small or moderate size, insect larvae, 
aquatic Coleoptera, together with a few pebbles. The vegetable 
matter, of which there is often a considerable quantity, probably 
remains intact after the gastric juice has acted on the worms and 
other animal food, and thus appears disproportionate to the other 
contents. 
Varieties . — The woodcock is subject to considerable variety in 
plumage, becoming sometimes white or fawn-coloured, and occasionally 
exhibiting a mixture of both colours. One correspondent has a spe- 
cimen with white wings, and another mentions a black woodcock (not 
Scolopax Sabmi) having been shot in December 1841, in Queen’s- 
county. One with cream-coloured primaries was shot at Castlereagh, 
