THE WOODCOCK. 
253 
to me ; — I see they are breeding with us this year again.” A great 
number were bred that season, “ some seores of young birds ” having- 
been observed by him. They seemed to be almost as plentiful as for- 
merly in an ordinary winter. In 1846, there were not so many. In the 
last week of May that year, young birds as large as their parents 
were seen ; and, on the 30th of the month, a nest with eggs, quite 
fresh, was found. Until this date, fifteen broods were known to the 
keeper to have been brought out. A nest was observed within 
fourteen yards of the spot where one containing four large young birds 
W'^as noticed in the preceding year ; and within two yards of w^hieh, 
another bird was at the same time raised from its nest with four eggs. 
In the years 1847, 1848, and 1849, woodcocks bred abundantly 
in Tollymore Park, not less than thirty nests having been seen each 
year, but they have now become so commonplace as to be compara- 
tively little noticed. These birds are considered by the keeper 
to breed twice from the circumstance of his observing them on 
their nests from Pebruary to July ; in the first week of which latter 
month this year (1849) he saw a nest containing but one fresh- 
laid egg. The sites of the nests are discovered by the manner in 
which “ the hen flies about in easy circles, uttering her whaap-wliaap, 
hisp, hisp^ and pointing her head and eye towards the spot where the 
young rest on a soft bed of leaves, grass, or anything that may have 
been near the place selected.” The keeper believed himself, as al- 
ready noticed, to have witnessed the old hen cariying off her young 
when suddenly disturbed. Under the impression of his having been 
deceived in this matter, he several times followed hens apparently 
thus burthened to wPere they alighted, and saw them run off with- 
out any young bird being there. It is, he says, “ the body behind 
the wings, the tail, legs, and feathers of the belly, that she droops down 
in a peculiar manner, that gives the appearance of a young bird being- 
clutched up.” He has several times been quite near to birds presenting 
the appearance here described.* 
Several instances of the parent carrying the young in its foot are brought 
together in Yarrell’s ‘British Birds’ (vol. ii. p. 591). Mr. St. John remarks, that 
“ regularly as the evening conies on, many woodcocks carry their young ones down 
to the soft feeding-grounds, and bring them back again to the shelter of the woods 
before daylight. * * * j j^ave often seen them going down to the swamps in 
the evening, carrying their young with them. Indeed, it is quite evident that they 
must in most instances transport the newly-hatched birds in this manner, as their 
nests are generally placed in dry heathery woods, where the young would inevitably 
