WOODCOCK 
In the north-western portion of its range it is found in the breeding 
season as far north, in Scandinavia, as the Arctic Circle (lat. 66J°), and 
up to about lat. 65° in western Russia ; but eastwards its northern limits 
are less extended, and in Siberia it is not met with much beyond 60° north 
latitude. Southwards it is a common breeding -species in the higher 
wooded grounds of the Azores, Madeira and the Canaries, and a limited 
number breed in Europe as far south as the Pyrenees, central Italy, 
Transylvania, the Balkans and the Caucasus ; while in Asia, though the 
breeding-range does not extend so far south, it nests in Kashmir and the 
Himalaya above 10,000 feet, and also on Fujiyama, the great volcano on the 
island of Hondo, Japan. It will thus be seen that the breeding-range of the 
woodcock may, roughly speaking, be included within four lines drawn from 
the Canaries to the Arctic Circle in Norway, thence across Europe and 
Asia to the sea of Okhotsk, southwards to Japan, and back through the 
Himalaya to the Canaries. Outside these limits it ranges southwards in 
winter, and is found in vast numbers on both sides of the basin of the 
Mediterranean, occurring in Africa as far south as the Atlas Mountains, 
and even beyond them, also in Persia, India, Ceylon, Burma, and South 
China. 
The woodcock leaves the Mediterranean basin towards the end of 
February and the beginning of March, and the bulk of the birds gradually 
move northwards during the latter month, and arrive in their more 
northern breeding -grounds early in April. It returns to the Mediterranean 
basin between the latter half of October and the end of November. Further 
east the dates of its spring- and autumn-movements are almost synchro- 
nous with the western, and it is found in Persia, India, Ceylon, Burma 
and Southern China from October till the end of February. 
Allied /oms.— Apart from the various species of snipes, which many 
ornithologists regard as congeneric with the woodcocks, the latter have 
few close allies, all characterized by having the tail-feathers tipped with 
silvery-white below. In the mountains of Java and north-western New 
Guinea a much darker plumaged species {Scolopax saturatd) is met with, 
and is easily distinguished from the common species by having the fore- 
head barred with buff and black, and the abdomen white instead of buff, 
very heavily barred with blackish. It is possible that a larger series of 
these rare birds than is at present available, may show that the Javan 
bird is distinct from that found in the Arfak Mountains in North-western 
New Guinea, in which case the former would bear the name of S. saturata 
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