WOODCOCK 
tion. The first is based on a bird’s well-known dislike for any unfamiliar 
noise. So the Chinese protect their tame pigeons from birds of prey by 
attaching to their tail-feathers little wooden whistles that sound when the 
pigeon takes to flight. If the lighthouses were provided with a siren that 
sounded continuously on dark nights, the birds might avoid them. The 
second idea is to light the walls with acetylene lamps, to prevent the birds 
dashing against them.” 
The birds are often so exhausted on arrival at the coast that they are 
scarcely able to rise again. Two lads, both of whom could shoot well, were 
given permission to kill rabbits on the Elginshire coast, and happened on 
a great flight of woodcock which had come in after a stormy crossing. 
The birds, which had taken refuge in the gorse -bushes fringing the cliffs, 
were only able to fly feebly, and nearly two hundred were killed in two 
days. On the third day almost all the survivors had passed on, and only six 
were shot. Writing from Norfolk, Mr Victor Ames observes that if flushed 
on the morning after arrival in a covert near the sea, the woodcocks 
merely fly out on to the grass and run about wagging their heads, and 
get back into the thicket on the first opportunity, being very difficult to 
flush a second time. The woodcocks, like their close allies the snipes, are 
solitary in their habits, and though large numbers often leave the shores 
of their northern breeding -haunts simultaneously and cross the seas 
together, they are not truly gregarious, but merely obeying a common 
impulse which prompts each individual to start at a certain time and 
follow the same route followed by its ancestors. On arrival at their 
destination the birds almost immediately scatter and resume their normal 
solitary existence, each woodcock taking up his abode in some particular 
spot until a further move becomes imperative, when all the scattered 
individuals disappear with one accord. 
Breeding habits .— woodcock is a very early breeder, and the pairing- 
season generally begins towards the end of February, but varies according 
to the mildness or severity of the weather. At that season the males become 
very active during the daytime, and when courting the females strut 
round with the feathers of the head and neck puffed out, the wings drooped, 
and the tail spread out like a fan. When the females begin to sit — ^in mild 
springs they sometimes do so as early as March, but usually not until 
April — ^the males commence their early morning and evening flights 
known as ” roding.” When indulging in this curious habit they fly slowly 
along about thirty feet from the ground with the feathers of the head 
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