212 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
liarity renders him a more agreeable object of pursuit at this 
period of the year, the rather that he is now found often in 
company with bevies of Quail, and that almost invariably the 
latter bird, when flushed in the stubbles where he feeds, flies 
for shelter to the very covert most haunted by the Woodcock. 
All this will, however, vaiy more or less, according to the 
nature and face of the country; for where there is excellent 
feeding and breeding ground, not interspersed with the ferny 
hill-sides, overgrown with young, thrifty, thickset woodland, 
Cock do not desert the region, but are found almost in the same 
haunts as in summer. 
And where that is the case, the sportsman may note this dis¬ 
tinction, that whereas in summer, when he has once killed off 
clean the whole of the one, two, or three broods, which frequent 
a small piece of coppice, or swamp thicket, it will be utterly 
useless for him to beat it again, he may now, day after day, kill 
every bird on a piece of good feeding ground, and will still 
each succeeding morning find it supplied with its usual com¬ 
plement. 
I first learned this fact in Orange county, where, within half 
a mile of the tavern at which I put up, there is a small, dry, 
thorny brake, with a few tall trees on it, lying on a sort of 
island, surrounded by a very wet bog meadow, and half encir¬ 
cled by a muddy streamlet, overhung with thick alders, the 
whole affair, brake, meadow, and all, not exceeding three or 
four acres. 
I knew the place of old as a certain summer-find for a single 
brood of Cock. In October, on the first day of my visit to the 
• country, I beat this brake, at throwing off in the morning, and 
bagged eleven fine fall birds—being four or five more than I 
expected—two birds went away wild without being shot at, and 
could not be found again. On the following day, having finished 
my beat early, and it not being above a mile out of my way 
home, I thought I would try to get the two survivors, and was 
much and most agreeably surprised at bagging nine birds, all 
that were flushed, on the spot. 
