Woodcock Dates It is usually maintained by sportsmen that the
great month for the arrival of woodcock immigrants from the north and west is November. Evidence that comes from acute observers .on the South Coast convinces me that many more arrive in January than at any other date. They come in at night almost invariably and in a sudden cold spell they are so numerous that if you stand on the shore, near Hythe, for example, you may hear them overhead, and now and again hear even the thud of a tired bird half collapsing with weariness. One observer has both heard the noise and picked up the exhausted but otherwise uninjured bird. My own experience for what it is worth tends to corroborate this view. Late during the War, ,the sand dunes between Calais and Boulogne were packed with woodcock and a Frenchman recorded that he and a friend or two had shot over a hundred at such a time and in such conditions. The date was January and the weather a frosty snowstorm. On these dunes as on our south coast the birds remain only for twelve hours or little more, before proceeding on their further journey to the west ; and it is odd that a number of woodcock that visit England move northwards during a part of their flight. What, many of us wonder, induces the preference for night-time flying ?
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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