The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1862-10-28 00:00:00

LAW AND CRIME.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

COCK SHOOTING.—No. 10.

We are come now to the fox-hunting of shooting—
Mark, cock! Whet sportsman does not, even at the bare
reading of these words, feel a thrill all over him—a
nervous, vigorous all-orals/was, and with it the impulse
to up gun in pantomime, and take an imaginary pull at
trigger. A true sportsman unquestionably feels more
pleasure in flushing and killing a woodcock or two than
a bag full of game that have been roared on )his own or
his neighbour's property. There is a racines in wood-
cock shooting, which, like a glass of very fine old
Madiera to the palate, leaves a memory of real enjoy-
ment, and which does not pall by repetition or quantity.
We have individually, in other countries, enjoyed the
eport of woodcock shooting almost beyond the limit of
English credence, but it has never palled on the testa.
We have been as keen for it the last day as the first;
and although tired of the bird as a table delicacy—au
witurcl, and in soup, and pie—still the fasci.
nation, as sport, has never lost its charm. The
woodcock among naturalists is placed at the head
of the snipes proper. It measures about fourteen inches
in length, twenty-five or six in breadth, and weighs
about twelve to fourteen ounces. It is a remarkably
shy and retired bird, rarely taking wing by day, unless
disturbed; but just at the close of day, all, as if by
common consent, quit the wood, nearly at the same
Instant, and wander over the open country in search of
splashy and moist places for food, retieing to their
hiding-places again jut as the morning, dawn. Thin,
when most other land birds aro recruiting exhausted
nature by sleep, these strange fellows arc rambling all
alive like larks in the sunbeams, through the dark,
directed by an exquisite sense of smelling to those
places most likely to produce their natural sustenance;
and by a still more exquisite sense of fueling in their
long bill, collecting it. The eye is not supposed to be
called into use, and like the mole, they may be said to
feel 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 to their general bulk
of body. and, like those of some other nocturnal birds,
are particularly framed for collecting the faint rays of
light in the darkened vales and sequestered woodlands
during their nocturnal excursions; thus also they are
enabled to avoid trees and other obstacles which con-
tinually occur. The nerves in the bill of the
woodcock, as in that of the dnek tribe, are
numerous, and highly sensible of discrimination
by the touch. We have seen a domesticated
woodcock at feed; he would clear a largo garden-
pot, covered with earth five or six inches deep, of every
worm placed at the bottom, and looking all the while
out of his large beautiful eyes, just as well pleased, and
thrice as intellectual, as some animals we wot of when
they are also luxuriously picking up what they like
beat. Speaking of the flight of woodcocks at even-
tide we were on occasions, on some lofty mountains,
(at feast six thousand feet above the sea, in a far distant
country,) returning to our tents with a friend, after a
long day's work of a sporting character, when crossing
a fern plain, there came out of that wondrous
stillness (felt only in forest life, when the chirp
of a grasshopper can be heard for a mile)
the most extraordinary, wild, unnatural screech; like
very hoarse disjointed music (travelling fariorsly from
the gorges and glens) flitting over us about thirty yards
above, at inconceivable speed. At first we were quite
' startled, wondering if the spirits of the au or glen, or
elfs ef the air, wore uniting to beguile us from the
intricate tract we had to pursee,to positive destruction.
On second thoughts we exclaimed together, "The cry
is thatofsomostrange birds—let us be ready for the next
aeranado ;" and in a few minutes on came another
rush of hoarse, screeching sound, [and just then the
moon came in play over the eastern headland. Bang
bang! bang! bang I it wee, and something dropped
here, there. After seine groping we picked up a wood-
cock, and the next morning we found another on the
ground, so that our acumen became advised. For seve-
ral nights after this we took our stand upon the same
plain. Our success was varied. We generally bagged,
however, two or three maple without moving • yard.
It was queer shooting! The bird at this hour, to our
sense of sight, skimmed the air with a velocity, we
fancied, we had never seen in ought bet the hawk or
swift in daytime. In the country to which we allude
the woodcock broods systematically, and from the ob-
servation we were able to make, we should certainly
be disposed to say there is no more reason for the birds
choosing the locality, temperature, and soil we found
the young in, than in the moist, dense woodlands of
England. It was ,our conviction at the time that the
woodcock bred twice a year,like the quaiL At all events
within a quarter of a mile distance we have shot young
cocks as well fledged as partridges in September, and
taken the old bird off her strange rough nest, in which
has been four or five eggs (a e once saw seven) and also
picked up a young bird about the size of a sparrow,
toddling along, in strange puzzle what to do with its
bill, quite unable to fly, but old-looking, serious, saga-
cious wondering, and these three circumstances con-
nected with the birth and breeding of this strange
bird, have occurred to one's knowledge not two days
apart. The sex of the woodcock has been considered
as entirely unmarked by any external signs, internally
the anatomist of course would readily detect it. The
sex, however, is not so difficult to determine as it is
supposed! The outermost feather of the wing in a hen
bird presents a narrow strip of white along the lower part
of the exterior veil of the feather. In the cock bird it
is otherwise! the same feather at the same place is beau-
tifully and regularly spotted with reddish-white. We
have noticed this distinction between the sexes of the
woodifock,still we should not be disposed to make • very
heavy bet upon its owreotness. Another criterion with
us is size. The male bird is smaller than the female (upon
the prinsipal that little men nearly always have big
wives, or affection great, big women) The plumage is
brighter, there is a sleekness, a game look of the head
and eye, and colour of the tints, width is not observable
In the paler, larger bird. In fact, a cock woodcock is
a cocky-looking bird, and, if we are not very much mis-
taken, much more difficult to kill than his mate. Those
birds arrive on our south coast during the
month of October, more or less sparingly,
according to the rigours of the country they leave, and
the lessening of the supplies of food there force them
away. We are disposed to think that cold, as cold,
has no influence on the nature of the woodcock, so
long as cold does not northern it into hard frost,
when the light springs are dried up, and other sources
of maintenance also; so in hot climates or weather, hot
I weather does not affect him, it is only drought he
I flits away from. Therefore it may be concluded, we
think, that unless there is hard trent and snow in
northern latitudes, or very extreme heat in southern,
the woodcock, as a rule, stays at home until one or the
other does appear, which is pretty sure to happen
sooner or later in the year. In November and December
the larger bodies appear in flights according as the
wind serves their purpose. They are not birds mechani-
cally framed for long flights and distances, and if the
wind is opposed to them they die by scores on the
passage. Under the moat favourable circumstances on
their first arrival on them shores they show signs of
excessive fatigue—it even appears indifferent to them
where they alight, and thus they have not unfrequently
been picked up in the open streets of the town a on the
sea coasts, being too tired to rim from the spot they
dropped on. When this is the case they are, on
examination, usually found to be extremely lean, which
presents to our mind a question a of easy solution.
Is their absorbent system so active as to reduce their
flesh in two, or at the most three, days? As it is well-
known no such exhaustion is ever observed either in
the red-wing or fit hi-fare that arrive here about the
same time, we must look to coneirutional peculiarity
for a solution of this difficulty, which consists in the
rapidity of their digestion, and the absence of all means
of repairing their waste during their voyage. This
consideration obtrudes an idea upon us relative to our
owntsex and gaina About our digestions it is. If we
digested like the woodcock, should we have lax
notions or healthy ones, instead of bilious ones. We
are disposed to believe that half the vices of life—such
as humbug, canting, morbid religiousness, puffed out
consequences, poulter-pigeon-Uke affectation of "better-
than-ye, oh ye wretched Samaritan!" arise mainly
through the liver, and, if not consequently, probably
from over-feeding. Give them the woodcock diet,
stop the porter and beefsteak, and they would, we are
charitable enough to think, become bearable. Oh
heavens ! the amount of liver in local life that wants to
be washed clean! Oh I for the constitutional pecu-
liaritythey
odmwe of the woodcock to carry off its humours. One,
visit
oespare,
however,
momzo moat
occasionally
laly themlhi
g.
II:
rhtsel
lfanaotrdmli:restfrolrtoheialezirtrinegsl!
or at least two days after the arrival of the woodcook,
rat
until frost sets in, which, hardening the earth (excuse
the simplicity of the information) and thereby stopping
the supplies of nutriment, they usually make their way
to their old haunts, where warm, sheltered springs keep
open the ground and nourish the insects they feed on.
11 le a mortifying fact.