BRITISH BIRDS, 
63 
longer than a day, but commonly find themfelves 
fufficiently recruited in that time to proceed inland, 
to the very fame haunts which they left the pre- 
ceding feafon. * In temperate weather they retire 
to the molfy moors, and high bleak mountainous 
parts of the country ^ but as foon as the frofl: fets 
in, and the fnows begin to fall, they return to 
lower and warmer fituations, where they meet with 
boggy grounds and fprings, and little oozing mof- 
fy rills which are rarely frozen, and feek the fliel- 
ter of clofe buflies of holly, furze and brakes in 
the woody glens, or hollow dells which are covered 
with underwood : there they remain concealed du- 
ring the day, and remove to different haunts and 
feed only in the night. From the beginning of 
March to the end of that month, or fometimes to 
the middle of April, they all keep drawing towards 
the coafls, and avail themfelves of the firfl fair 
wind to return to their native woods : fhould it hap- 
pen to continue long to blow adverfely, they are 
thereby detained ; and as their numbers increafe, 
* In the winter of 1797, the gamekeeper of E. M. Pley- 
dell, Efq. of Whatcombe, in Dorfetihire, brought him a Wood- 
cock, which he had caught in a net fet for rabbits, alive and un- 
hurt, Mr P. fcratched the date upon a bit of thin brafs, and 
bent it round the Woodcock’s leg, and let it fly. In Decem- 
ber the next year, Mr Pleydell fhot this bird with the brafs 
about its leg, in the very fame wood where it had been firfl 
caught by the gamekeeper . — f Communicated hy Sir John Tre- 
^elyan, Bart.) 
