Woodcock and thrushes breeding in open and Snipe a m o n g trees In view of recent notes on Woodcock Scolopax rusticola nesting away from trees (Brit. Birds, 64: 76; 65: 30-31), it may be worth recording that at dusk on 5 th July 1971, when I walked across the bare southern part of Colonsay in the Inner Hebrides to cross the ford to Oronsay, I encountered Woodcock roding very commonly all over the moorland and bog, though there was no woodland for miles, only occasional rock outcrops and small bushes. Woodcock will at times flight long distances to feed, calling as they go, but these birds would have had to pursue an extraordinarily circuitous route to occur where I saw them if they had been flighting to feed, and I have no doubt that many of them must have been nesting in open country, though it would be hard work to prove it. This may be compared with the breeding of both the Hebridean Song Thrush Tardusphilomelos hebridensis and the Iceland Redwing T. iliacus coburni in open situations in the western parts of the ranges of those species; with the habit of various supposedly woodland birds, for example Woodpigeons Columba palumbus, of nesting in the open in such places as Orkney; and, in contrast, with the readiness of Snipe Gallinago gallinago, usually considered birds of open country, to breed in wet woodlands in such areas as the western Highlands, where I once found one with small chicks in