562 
WOODCOCK. 
bill, collecting their food. The eye is not called into use, for, like the 
mole, they actually feed beneath the surface ; and by the sensibility of 
the instrument which is thrust into the soft earth, not a worm can 
escape that is within reach. The eyes of the Woodcock are large in 
proportion, and, like those of some other nocturnal birds, are the better 
calculated for collecting the faint rays of light in the darkened vales 
and sequestered woodlands, in their nocturnal excursions ; thus en- 
abling- them to avoid trees and other obstacles, which continually occur. 
The nerves in the bill, as in that of the duck tribe, are numerous, and 
highly sensible of discrimination by the touch. 
A Woodcock in our menagerie very soon discovered and drew forth 
every worm in the ground, which was dug up, to enable it to bore ; and 
worms put into a large garden-pot, covered with earth five or six inches 
deep, are always cleared by the next morning, without one being left. 
The enormous quantity of worms that these birds eat, is scarcely 
credible ; indeed, it would be the constant labour of one person to 
procure such food for two or three Woodcocks. The difficulty of col- 
lecting a sufficiency of such precarious aliment, determined us to try if 
bread and milk would not be a good substitute ; and we found that by 
putting clean washed worms into that mess, the bird soon acquired a 
taste for this new food, and will now eat a bason of bread and milk in 
twenty-four hours, besides the worms it can procure. 
It is observable, that previous to the flirting or rising of a Wood- 
cock from the ground, which, in the language of sportsmen, is termed 
Jlushing, the tail is thrown up in a perpendicular direction, and by 
spreading the feathers, the white tips all appear distinct. 
Few naturalists at present will be found to doubt the actual migra- 
tion and re-migration of birds ; and that many repair annually to the 
same haunts and same nest, to breed. So many instances of this have 
been related upon good authority, that it scarcely requires strengthening 
by further proof ; but a circumstance so well authenticated as that 
related by Mr. Bewick, on the authority of Sir John Trevelyan, Bart., 
is deserving of notice. “ In the winter of 1797,” says he, the game- 
keeper of E. M. Pleydell, Esq., of Watcombe, in Dorsetshire, brought 
him a Woodcock alive and unhurt, which he had caught in a net set 
for rabbits. Mr. Pleydell scratched the date upon a bit of thin brass, 
bent it round the Woodcock’s leg, and let it fly. In December, the 
next year, Mr. Pleydell shot this bird, with the brass about its leg, in 
the same wood where it had been flrst caught.” 
The same author mentions, from the same authority, that a white 
woodcock was seen three successive winters in Penrice Wood, Gla- 
morganshire.* 
