re is the bird's twisting flight, which, particularly
inside the covert, makes it anything but an easy target. Third and last,
it is better to eat than any other of our wild birds, with the possible
exception of the golden plover. Taking one consideration with another,
then, it is not surprising that the first warning cry of "Woodcock
over!" from the beaters should be the signal for a sharp and somewhat
erratic fusillade along the line, a salvo which the beaters themselves
usually honour by crouching out of harm's way, since they know from
experience that even ordinarily cool and collected shots are sometimes
apt to be fired with a sudden zeal to shoot the little bird, which may
cost one of them his eyesight. According to the poet,

"Lonely woodcocks haunt the watery glade;"

and so no doubt they do at meal-time after sunset, but we are more used
to flushing them amid dry bracken or in the course of some frozen ditch.
Quite apart, however, from its exhilarating effect on the sportsman, the
bird has quieter interests for the naturalist, since in its food, its
breeding habits, its travels, and its appearance it combines more
peculiarities than perhaps any other bird, certainly than any other of
the sportsman's birds, in these islands. It is not, legally speaking, a
game bird and was not included in the Act of 1824, but a game licence is
required for shooting it, and it enjoys since 1880 the protection
accorded to other wild birds. This is excellent, so far as it goes, but
it ought to be protected during the same period as the pheasant,
particularly now that it is once more established as a resident species
all over Britain and Ireland.

This new epoch in the history of its adventures in these islands is the
work of the Wild Birds' Protection Acts. In olden times, when half of
Britain was under forest, and when guns were not yet invented that could
"shoot flying," woodcocks must have been much more plentiful than they
are to-day. In those times the bird was taken on the ground in springes
or, when "roding" in the mating season, in nets, known as "shots," that
were hung between the trees. When the forest area receded, the resident
birds must have dwindled to the verge of extinction, for on more than
one occasion we find even a seasoned sportsman like Colonel Hawker
worked up to a rare pitch of excitement after shooting woodcock in a
part of Hampshire where in our day these birds breed regularly. Thanks,
however, to th