214 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
swamp, where a large spring, which never freezes, bursts out 
and percolates through the vegetable soil for a distance of a 
hundred yards, or a little more, before gathering itself into a 
single channel, I saw at least a hundred birds rise within three 
minutes. It was very late in the season, the 6th or 8th of No¬ 
vember, and sharp frost had already set in, and it was so late 
in the afternoon that it was almost dark. I was shooting with 
a friend, who had a young dog which could not be controlled 
from running in; and all the birds were flushed at two rises, 
each of us getting two double shots. The Woodcock settled 
down all over the large swamp, but it was too dark to follow 
them; and the next morning, it having been an intensely hard 
black frost at night, not a bird was to be found in the country 
Had we come upon that flight earlier in the day, and with old 
steady dogs, the sport might have been incalculable. 
I have always believed, however, that to be an instance of 
actual migration; and I am well satisfied all those birds had 
dropped in, from a long flight from the north, whence they had 
been expelled by the severe cold, with no intention of stopping 
longer than to recruit themselves by a single day’s repose. 
After that night no more birds were seen in that part of the 
country, until the breaking of the ensuing winter. 
One other point appears to be worthy of remark, with regard 
to the autumnal migration of Cock, on their way southward, 
namely, that sometimes, particularly when the winter sets in 
unusually early and severe on the sea-board, and south of the 
mountains, the flight of Cock come down all nearly at once, and 
in one direction, avoiding whole ranges of country, and abso¬ 
lutely swarming in other regions. A few seasons since, when 
the northern and river counties, so far down as Rockland, were 
covered with snow, which lay two or three days, in the first 
week of October, no more Woodcock were found that autumn 
in that district, or in Eastern New Jersey, quite down to the 
sea, while they literally abounded on the eastern side of the 
Hudson, and were killed in profusion throughout Westchester, 
and even within a few miles of New York city. 
