The hunting of the woodcock and its future.
Knowledge of the Woodcock over the centuries
Many people including scientists like, for example, Buffon, Belon, Cuvier, Klein, Brisson, Linnaeus, and others claimed that woodcock came down in winter because of the cold of the high mountains.
Until the end of the 19th century, certain works still defend this idea.
Belon Pierre 1517 - 1566 Carl Von Linnaeus 1707 - 1778 Cuvier Georges 1769 - 1832
The first to my knowledge is the learned naturalist, astronomer and draftsman, the Englishman Georges Edwards in 1758 to describe a migration between the northern regions like Norway and further still towards the East and the western regions, France and Great Britain . Buffon said of him about the woodcock, Edwards thought they all went like so many other birds to the most remote areas of the North East, he was not informed of their retreat to the mountains.
Edwards Georges 1694 - 1773
The transport of sandpipers was already known in 1780 , a work, "natural history, general and particular" deals with the subject on the role of the parents of the woodcock and it mentions: the sandpipers even begin to fly, before having other feathers than those of the wings, they flee thus fluttering and running when they are discovered, one saw the mother and the father take under their throats one of the small ones, the weakest undoubtedly, and carry it thus more than a thousand paces.
In 1823 a work also mentions the transport of sandpipers "Complete Treaty of Rifle Hunting". The father and the mother show a particular attachment for their young, we have seen one take one on their backs where it clings to, and thus carry it very far.
In 1842 , in England, banding was already a means of study, the woodcock always comes to the same place each season, which proves the reality of this fact, it is that we have killed birds of this kind, to which we had attached a small piece of metal wire during the previous season.
