A dictionary of British birds : reprinted from Montagu's Ornithological dictionary, and incorporating the additional species described by Selby; Yarrell, in all three editions, and in natural-history journals / compiled and edited by Edward Newman.
- George Montagu
- Date:
- 1866
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A dictionary of British birds : reprinted from Montagu's Ornithological dictionary, and incorporating the additional species described by Selby; Yarrell, in all three editions, and in natural-history journals / compiled and edited by Edward Newman. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![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 noctunial excursions, and thus enable 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 sen- sitive of discrimination by the touch. A Woodcock in our menagerie very soon dis- covered 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 morn- ing, without one being left. The enormous quantity of worms that these birds eat is scarcely credible; but really it would be the constant labour of one person to pro- cure such food for two or three Woodcocks. The difficulty of collecting 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 large bason of bread and mUk in twenty-four hours, be- sides worms. Lord Stanley has had a Woodcock in confinement these three years, which is frequently fed on raw flesh. Erora experience there appears great pro- bability that many birds of a similar habit, to the Woodcock or the liuff, might be in- duced to.change their diet by degrees in the manner stated, that would otherwise starve by a total change at first. The Common Godwit is, like the Huff, usually fattened by such soft food; but the Knot will starve before he will touch it, and therefore requires inducement to change his diet. In this manner we induced a Curlew to change its natural food, as before related. It is observable that pre- vious to the flirting or rising of a W'ood- cock from the ground, which in the lan- guage of sportsmen is termed flushing, the tail is thrown up in a perpendicular di- rection, and by spreading the feathers the white tips all appear distinct. Few natu- ralists at present will be found to doubt the actual migration 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 re- lated upon good authority, that it scarcely requires strengthening by further proof; but a circumstance so well authenticated as that related by Mr. Bewick is deserving of note. “ In the winter of 1797 the game- keeper of E. M. Pleydell, Esq., of Wat- combe, in Dorsetsbife, 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, and bent it round the Wood- cock’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 first caught. Commu- nicated by Sir John Trevelyan, Bart.” The same author mentions, from the same authority, that a AVhite Woodcock tvas seen three successive winters in Penrice Wood, Glamorganshire. It is generally admitted that Woodcocks are more plenti- ful in Devonshire and Cornwall than in any other part of England, but they are not near so numerous as in Ireland, and they seem to increase in number in the western parts of that kingdom. From this circumstance it should appear that the great column of Woodcocks, in their pas- sage to and from the norih, fly in that la- titudinal direction which is intersected by the western parts of Ireland. 'Those which continue their route further south, would find their next resting-place in Portugal; and as that part of the continent ofEurope is nearly in the same latitudinal direction with Ireland, we should expect to find them equally plentiful in that country. In this we have not been disappointed; for we have lately been assured by our friend Capt. Latham, who is with the combined army in Portugal, that Woodcocks are very plentiful in the month of November. This gentleman, in a letter to the author, says, “ We have been so much in motion that I have not had much time for shooting, but I have some days killed fourteen or six- teen couple of Woodcocks to a pointer in low shrubs.” It seems they become scarcer as the winter advances, even in that country, so that we may reasonably infer that a large portion continue the same latitudinal direction southward until they arrive in Africa. In the beginning of March, on their return northward, Wood- cocks are again observed in Portugal in great abundance, but disappear' as the warmer season approaches. We shall not discuss the subject of migration here, as we propose to enlarge upon that interest- ing part of physiology in another place. Woodcock, Sea.—See Godwit. Woodcracker.—See Nuthatch. [Wood Grouse.—See Grouse, Wood.] [Wood Lark.—See Lark, Wood.] Woodpecker. — A genus of birds, the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28089935_0412.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
