This
anecdote the rector of Trotton at that time has often told to a near
relation of mine; and, to the best of my remembrance, the collar
was in the possession of the rector.
(* I have read a like anecdote of a swan.)
At present I do not know anybody near the sea-side that will take
the trouble to remark at what time of the moon woodcocks first
come: if I lived near the sea myself I would soon tell you more of
the matter. One thing I used to observe when I was a sportsman,
that there were times in which woodcocks were so sluggish and
sleepy that they would drop again when flushed just before the
spaniels, nay, just at the muzzle of a gun that had been fired et
them: whether this strange laziness was the effect of a recent
fatiguing journey I shall not presume to say.
Nightingales not only never reach Northumberland and Scotland,
but also, as I have been always told, Devonshire and Cornwall. In
those two last counties we cannot attribute the failure of them to
the want of warmth: the defect in the west is rather a presumptive
argument that these birds come over to us from the continent at the
narrowest passage, and do not stroll so far westward.
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