3 ^ 
NATURE NOTES. 
were no Woodcocks in England that fateful and disastrous year, 
save those bred in our own islands. And from no fewer than 
fifty-five schedules he gives, in a remarkable way, twenty-seven 
instances at various periods of the Woodcock’s greater or more 
numerous flights. 
The first flight of these birds occurs early in October, being 
mostly of the smaller and ruddier Scandinavian sort, already feel- 
ing the approaching gripe of winter ; the later and greater flight 
is of the larger grayer Mes-European (Middle of Europe) birds, 
before the end of November. But all these visits occur with 
winds from east and south-east varying to north. As a very 
interesting instance of the powers of flight possessed by a 
Woodcock, Mr. Cordeaux estimates that on the 7th October, 
1887, a Woodcock left Heligoland at 5 p.m., travelled across 
Heligoland, S.W., arrived at the Nash Lighthouse, midway in 
the coast of South Glamorgan (as shown by the British Associa- 
tion Reports on Migration) at 3.30 next day, October 8, having 
traversed the distance of 550 miles in io| hours, at 52 miles an 
hour, which is about the estimated flight of this bird. Another 
record of the Woodcock’s flight from Sleswig to Whitby Light- 
house, gives io| hours for 420 miles, or 40 miles an hour. This 
was done on November 8th, 1887. The Woodcock seems to be at 
his best when going up the wind, if it be not too strong. 
Enough has been said to show that Woodcocks migrating and 
sailing at great altitudes in the clear air of the now sun-forsaken 
North, and feeling the bite of the North and East wind most 
keenly — for the bird is tender from crown to toe — are guided b}- 
the prime considerations of warmth and moisture to winter in 
England in severe seasons, much as our folk winter at Mentone 
and in Italy. In warm winters like 1877 they do not need the 
shelter of our western shores, their further limit west, and the 
influence of the Gulf Stream, without which England would be 
a Labrador. When, however, the east winds come, they bring 
the Woodcock, as the same east winds brought the succulent 
locusts to Israel in the desert. Too much heat or too much 
cold drives the birds away to more temperate climes. Thus the 
Woodcock is the tell-tale of winter heat or cold : and before 
long it will result that what the magnet-needle is to the naviga- 
tion of great iron -clads, and to our telegraphs — the running pen 
of the nineteenth century — that the flight of birds — the dark- 
steel magnet-needle of the heavens — will be to meteorology and 
the science of climates in the twentieth century. 
H. D. Gordon.. 
