some stream debouching on a clayey basin converts this
into a mossy swamp, through which its movement is only to
be detected at the further end where, as if ashamed of its late
sluggishness, it gushes-out to resume its brawling descent. But
swamp or stream, the water must be moving to please the
Woodcock ; and, though there arc exceptions to the rule, you will
generally hunt in vain, mountain swamps and tarns, where there
is no outlet and the water is stagnant, though all the surroundings
and adjuncts be everything, apparently, that the heart of
Woodcock can desire. In England we find them beside
little stagnant ditches and pools in covers ; but in India I have
seldom so seen them, having almost always flushed them in the
neighbourhood of running water.
They are almost invariably solitary. I have flushed three or
four out of one and the same clump of holly bushes not thirty
yards in diameter; but it is far more common to pick them up
one by one along the course of some cover embowered stream at
some distance from each other. At the same time, though
thus living alone, they travel in parties. To-day there wiil^
not be a Woodcock anywhere in the valley ; next morning
there are a dozen scattered about all over the place, at distances
of two to four hundred yards from each other; unless indeed^ \
there be some enclosed garden or tempting patch of low thick
prickly cover, where they think themselves safe from hostile
birds and beasts, in which, though still keeping each other as
much as may be at arm's length, several will gather. A few
days later and not a bird is to be found. They have disappeared,
as they arrived, en masse. They certainly always
move by night, and for the most part feed chiefly during the
hours of darkness ; and, though they may sometimes be seen
feeding in the afternoon, I have never myself witnessed this.
Colonel Tickcll says :—" The Woodcock, it is well known,
returns year after year, like the Chimney Swallow, to the same
spot. One or two of them had thus for several winters attracted
attention at the Residency, (Kathmandu, Nepal), and one afternoon,
in October 1S40, whilst seated lounging near an open
window or glass door in that building, I descried a fine specimen,
looking very smooth and fat, with his rich chestnut
plumage and pretty black bars strongly contrasted against
the green turf, run along from under a species of lignum vitse
bush, and begin pecking and boring about in the grass. But
pecking is not quite an applicable term to the movements of
the bird, which appeared at every two or three steps to plunge
his bill into the herbage and hold it there for a second or so,
giving his head a quick shaking to right and left, as if endeavouring
to pierce the ground, and now and then looking up
and allowing me to see his large black eye. Occasionally it
appeared to nibble up and swallow some small object ; but its
powers of deglutition arc considerable, and the Woodcock will
bolt a whole lobworm as one of the Lazzaroni at Naples takes
in a yard or so of maccaroni, or a Madras juggler, a sword. It
appeared to me rather a clumsy bird, not nimble and sprightly
like the Sandpipers, but somewhat lumpy in its gait, and the
large, round, head and perpendicular forehead of the bird gave
it an air more of the dove than of the serpent. If alarmed
it would run under cover, and squat, its long bill resting on
the ground ; but on finding all quiet, would soon rise and glide
out. On none of these occasions did it take wing, nor fairly
proceed into the open, never straying further than seven or
eight yards from a bush."
They arc with us very tame and confiding birds ; it is not
merely that they, as a rule, only rise when you arc quite close
to them, and then, if not fired at, only flap a dozen yards or
so away behind some bush before they drop again. This might
be due to the fact that, being chiefly nocturnal in their habits,
they do not sec over well in daylight; are confused by the
glare, and conceive concealment more likely to conduce to
their safety than flight; but they really affect rather than shun
the neighbourhood of mankind. In a huge valley, containing
thousands of charming haunts, if there be a single village in
** it near a stream, you arc more likely to meet with Woodcock
in any little garden plots or enclosures on its outskirts than
. - anywhere else. And they are not afraid of men, and if you
do not fire at them, you may put them up two or three times
in a day, day after day, from the same place ; and after a few
days they will scarcely take the trouble to flap ten yards away
when you do rouse them up, and will even, squatting by the
trunk of some low tree, sit and blink at you with their large
eyes only half open in a sort of reproachful half-disgusted
way. "That fellow bothering here again; it is too bad that
one can't get a single good day's rest!" And then when a
dog bustles in, he is in no hurry, but just flutters noiselessly
up a few feet as Dash approaches, and as soon as convinced
the bird has flown, the dog rushes off, scouring round and
round in large circles hoping to pick up the scent again, down
pops the Woodcock placidly in its old place, not apparently
at all frightened, only very much dissatisfied. Day after day
in the Sewaliks of the Eastern Dun for nearly a fortnight,
when after a Sambhar with fabulously large antlers, never
alas ! destined to become trophies of mine, I used to see, and my
dogs used to put up the same three Woodcock in the same
spots, until we all knew each other perfectly, so well that when
having to return to work, I was compelled to give up the
Phantom Deer, I parted with those Woodcocks in peace, and
believe that for that season, at any rate, they escaped molestation.
No European writer notices their tamcness and confidingness,
which has so much struck me here; but that may be