Foxglove - January 13

THE woodcock came ahead of the first of the hard weather, falling like leaves on the fallen leaves, exhausted from their journey.

Amazing-looking birds they are, so well adapted for their lifestyle, so exquisitely camouflaged, and carrying a scent that some dogs find irresistible and others cannot bear, for many otherwise good gundogs will refuse to pick one up, or else fail to find it.

After minimum rest, most of them carried on their journey ahead of the curve of winter that followed them, but a few liked it here, and stayed.

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There is no such thing as a free lunch, though, and in the three-corner wood the fox would creep, maybe a dog or two, while there was not much food for a mud-probing bird.

Away across the hill, there was plenty of food, good shelter, and not much in the way of foxes, but now and again, there would be shooting, which did not occur in the three-corner wood.

The woodcock is a challenging shot, and for many, a gourmet dish.

As with the dogs, you either love the flavour or hate it: as I belong in the latter group.

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I do not shoot them, but I do not criticise those who would, for they are a sustainable harvest, even though we here are on the furthest reaches of their patrol.

The fox does not trouble about taste or woodcock mapping: if it is there, he will eat it.

I watched the fox leaving the wood in something of a hurry, mud spurting under its feet at every stride, woodcock meals forgotten in its haste.

It may well have been the same fox that I had seen a while back, crossing a field of virgin snow, its coat richly raised against the cold.

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I knew its path, for I had followed its prints on that cold day, knew where it was lying-up in the brambles, cosy and dense against the weather.

I knew where the earth was too, the earth that has housed generations of foxes, a "sure find" at the right time of year.

If you know where a fox is, you know where he is not.

There was a small covey of grey partridges on the land, about half a mile away and snug in the cover-crop, except that partridges love to travel and might appear anywhere on the property.

You did not want a fox there, if conservation was your game.

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On a morning rimed with frost and chill on your face, the air was thick with ice-crystals, and the ground too hard for a woodcock to feed.

The last of them left the three-corner wood then, possibly to try their luck in the big warm woods over the hill, where the frost did not always reach, or maybe to continue on their journey.

A most mysterious bird, even now with little known about it, though a handful of pretty legends.

A few days later, with the ground soft and the wind bitter, I might be standing in the woods over the hill, listening to the tapping of sticks, the pattering of fallen shot through the leaves, and maybe once or twice, carried on the air, a cry of "woodcock!"