WOODCOCK AT HOME.
This season has been peculiarly rich in the discovery of individual migrations : new light has been thrown on the winter journeys of starlings (from Germany), of teal (from Iceland), and of woodcock. The woodcock, to many of us the most interesting bird in the list, and almost the loveliest, ar.wars to be adopting England as its native country. A sprinkling has always nested with us, especially in the New Forest, from which even the motor-car and tourist have not driven it. The theory is that the birds do not stay where they are bred, but move on westwards. Happily there is now some reason to believe that the birds remember the place of their origin and return to breed there. The nesting range is certainly wider. I knew of one nest last year on the very edge of Liverpool, and the mother bird was seen to imitate the partridge's trick of shamming to be wounded in order to draw an interrupter away from her brood.
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