“Bird-Hag Wood,” was formerly a favourite haunt of the woodcock, and I have shot many in it; but it was cleared away in the seventies. {36a} Woodcock occasionally breed on the moor, and a nest was found some years ago within 80 yards of the road to Horncastle, opposite the Tower on the Moor. Among my notes I find this: “Dec. 5, 1872, we saw about a dozen woodcock in Bird-Hag Wood, but only three were shot.” I have just mentioned Bird-Hag and its woodcock. Pleasant memories of that wood have lingered with more than one sportsman. A former poetic owner of Kirkstead has written of it thus {36b}:— Remote Bird-Hag, that favourite preserve, To crown some chosen day, the choice reserve Where noble oaks their autumn tints display, And fern gigantic checks the sportsman’s way But well is toil and trouble there repaid, By the wild tenants of that oaken shade, While rabbits, hares, successive, cross your road, And scarcely give the time to fire and load,— While shots resound, and pheasants loudly crow, Who heeds the bramble? Who fatigue can know? Here from the brake, that bird of stealthy flight, The mottled woodcock glads our eager sight, Great is his triumph, whose lucky shot shall kill The dark-eyed stranger of the lengthy bill Unlike the pheasant, who himself betrays, And dearly for his daring challenge pays. Small notice gives the woodcock of his flight; Not seen at once, at once he’s lost to sight. Yet short his flight, and should you mark him down, The chances are that woodcock is your own; But quick the hand, and no less quick the eye, Would stop him as he hurries by; Few are the birds, whate’er may be their sort, More try the skill, give more exciting sport. A few words may be said on the pheasants and partridges; and first of the former. The breed on the Ostler ground have a history. The late Sir Henry Dymoke, of Scrivelsby Court, used to rear, in large numbers, a white breed of pheasant, and as, with the exception of the Ostler ground, he, with his brother, had almost the whole of the shooting, extending from Scrivelsby to the Witham, they spread over that ground, and sought a kind of asylum in the dense cover of the Ostler plantations. Further, the writer’s father-in-law imported an Indian breed, called the “Kalege” pheasant, a very handsome bird; and these two strains have affected the breed on that ground, and, doubtless, have also had their effect on pheasants in the neighbourhood generally. White broods of pheasants are from time to time hatched on the ground; also piebald varieties are not uncommon. In the year 1898, a cream-coloured specimen was shot. Some of the cocks have at times a decided fringe of blue or purple in their plumages from the Kalege mixture.