WOODCOCK 
in its migrations, for, as Seebohm has pointed out, it is certainly not a 
gipsy migrant, but has a regular winter-home, to which it constantly 
returns year after year. The rule among regular migrants is unquestion- 
ably that whenever the breeding -range overlaps the winter-range, the 
birds in the overlapping districts are residents, those breeding further 
north only passing through the intervening district on migration to winter 
further south. Another argument against the supposed migration of 
resident birds is the fact that nests with eggs are not infrequently found 
in mild seasons in the British Isles in March, when the spring migration 
from the Continent is only commencing. 
Food. — Earth-worms, slugs, fresh -water molluscs, and insects of various 
kinds are the principal articles of food, but vegetable matter is sometimes 
found in the stomach, and tender shoots of heather are said to be eaten 
occasionally. Mr Hugh Wormald, who has kept both woodcock and snipe 
in captivity writes, “ I could never get my woodcock or snipe to eat any- 
thing but live food ; they would sometimes pick up a root of some water- 
plant (which must have felt very like a worm !) but they always discarded 
it.” Earth-worms form the woodcock’s staple article of diet, and the 
number required to satisfy its voracious appetite is almost incredible. 
The bill of the woodcock, which is about three inches in length, is specially 
adapted by Nature to enable the bird to discover and capture its prey. 
The upper mandible is abundantly provided with rows of nerve -cells, 
which culminate in a subterminal mass in the swollen cushion-like ex- 
tremity of the bill, and render that organ extraordinarily sensitive to touch, 
and no doubt also, though in a less degree, to smell. The upper mandible 
terminates in a sharp, slightly curved nail, about one -tenth of an inch 
longer than the lower mandible. This highly organized bill is used as a 
probe, and is thrust into the mud or soft -soil in search of earth-worms, 
which are unerringly detected, seized, and withdrawn. The ground where 
woodcocks have been probing may always be recognized by the round 
holes all over the surface, larger than those made by the snipe. Water 
of some sort in the immediate vicinity of the feeding -ground is an 
essential, for all the Scolopacidce require to wash the bill frequently when 
feeding. 
In hard weather, when the usual feeding -grounds in the marshes and 
water-meadows are frozen, and its favourite earth-worms are unattain- 
able, the woodcock betakes itself to the warmer and more sheltered parts 
of the woods and to ditches, where it searches for insects and small 
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