The woodcock often breeds in the south of England, but is usually a migrating bird, arriving during the first moon in November; it is not difficult to shoot when it first rises, but when steam is really up and it is zig-zagging between the branches of an oak, it takes a good shot to make sure of it.  I shall never forget the first woodcock I shot as a boy; it was a thick misty day in November, I fired, and though I felt certain I had not missed, the smoke hung and the air was too thick to see, and, after a long search, I left the wood and was going home when our old spaniel, Flush, turned his head to examine something in a deep cart rut.  Following the direction of his eyes, I saw my woodcock; it must have flown 100 yards or more after I fired.  I was still more pleased with the last shot I fired in our old Surrey covers at a woodcock going like an express train—­and faster, for they are said to fly at the rate of 150 miles an hour—­with all his tricks, through thick branches in the adjoining cover, where he fell at least 65 yards from where I stood.  A friend of mine had the good-fortune to see an old woodcock, which had evidently bred in his woods, flying, followed by five or six young ones; he said it was one of the prettiest bits of natural history he had ever seen.

     “If a woodcock had a partridge’s breast
     He’d be the best bird that ever was dressed;
     If a partridge had a woodcock’s thigh
     He’d be the best bird that ever did fly.”

is a very old description, and fairly divides the honours between the two birds.

The hawfinch is very easily recognized by its distinct and beautiful colouring; it is a shy bird, and though it bred regularly at Aldington, we rarely saw it.  It is commoner here, and is sometimes very destructive, its powerful beak making havoc with the “marrowfats”; but, though I am partial to green peas of this description, I would sooner suffer some damage than have the hawfinches shot.

In 1918 the cuckoos were exceedingly numerous here, and round my house they were calling all day long.  Owing to the terrible winter and early spring months of the previous year, so many of the insectivorous birds had been destroyed, that the caterpillars had escaped, and were more numerous than ever in the following spring.  The oaks in places were completely stripped of their foliage by the larvae of Tortrix viridana, almost as soon as the leaves were out.  The cuckoos discovered them, but were not in sufficient numbers to keep them down, and it was midsummer before the trees recovered.  I have referred to the damage in my plum orchard at Aldington from the attack of the larvae of the winter-moth; the damage is not confined to the actual year of its occurrence, the crop suffers the following year owing to the previous defoliation of the tree, which is weakened and is unable to mature healthy fruit buds.  At Aldington, in a hot summer, the cuckoos used to call nearly all night, and I have heard them when it was quite dark.