WOODCOCK 
with plenty of undergrowth and fern. The nest is generally sheltered 
but is often placed in a quite open spot in a wood. 
Eggs . — The number of eggs laid is always four. It has been stated that 
three are generally laid, but this is no doubt an error, and the clutches 
seen were probably incomplete. The eggs are of a broad oval or slightly 
pyriform shape, and vary in colour from greyish -white to brownish - 
buff, spotted with reddish-brown and ash-grey or lilac-grey. The mark- 
ings are generally most numerous round the broad end, and sometimes 
form a well-marked cap. The average measurements are 1*75 by 1 *3 inches. 
Incubation lasts twenty-one days, or occasionally one or two days longer. 
The female sits very closely, and will generally allow one to approach 
very near without taking flight, trusting to her beautiful mixed plumage, 
so like her surroundings, to shield her from observation. When at last 
she knows that she has been discovered — her great black eye being often 
the cause of her undoing — she rises from her nest, and after flying a little 
way, begins fluttering along the ground, endeavouring to draw the intruder 
away from her nest by feigning a broken wing. 
As is the case with all young waders, the young are able to run soon 
after they are hatched. They are very lovely little birds in their richly 
marked chestnut and buff downy plumage, and are most carefully tended 
by their mother. We have on several occasions, both at home and abroad, 
suddenly come across a female woodcock accompanied by very small 
young, with their quills just beginning to grow. The mother flies off a 
yard or two and then flutters away along the ground in an apparently 
totally disabled condition, while the young run with outstretched wings 
displaying the blue sheaths of the half-grown quills, and looking like 
tiny ostriches as they scatter in all directions. They are so nimble 
that they are difficult to catch, and when once they have squatted it is 
almost impossible to distinguish them from their surroundings. When 
the female wishes to remove her young from one place to another, or 
from the wood where they have been bred, to the feeding ground, she 
picks them up one at a time with her feet and flies off with them. In rising, 
the bill is probably momentarily used to assist in keeping the young 
pressed close to her breast, but this point has never been satisfactorily 
settled. When in the act of being carried, the legs of the young one hang 
down below the mother, and are very noticeable as they become longer. 
In the New Forest the late Duke of Beaufort had the unusual good fortune 
to come across a female woodcock watering three young ones at a rivulet, 
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