Woodcock Scolopax rusticola

Fairly common passage migrant and winter visitor. Few documented records but annual, mainly October. – November.

The first record dates back to 1898, when a number were reported on the island (Evans and Buckley, cited in Pennington et al.).

As coverage is (relatively speaking) heavily concentrated in the autumn, the spread of records is bias to the months of September and October. Records for 1997 when ARM was present most of the year on the island is perhaps a good representative for this species.

• From two, on the 16^th January numbers fell to a single bird on the 17^th and 18^th. Between 18^th and 27^th March there were 1 – 2 birds present on 4 dates, then one on the 6^th April. Autumn passage was steady with 1 – 4 birds on 11 dates between 27^th October and 14^th November. One or two birds were still present in December.