Witherby's Handbook (1920) includes the following items in its food: Earthworms; also insects (coleoptera and their larvae, orthoptera (Forficula) larvae of lepidoptera, etc.); small mollusca, etc. Grains of maize recorded on one occasion in stomach, and mussels (Mytilus) also said to be eaten, as well as small crustacea.
Behavior.—Mr. Gordon (1915) says:
During its flight the bill of the woodcock is pointed downwards, and the wings are not extended to their full stretch. It seldom makes sustained flights, however, except on migration. During a shoot at Alnick a woodcock was seen to alight on the ground and then to throw leaves over its back, presumably to hide itself from the guns. If so, it would seem that the woodcock is one of the most sagacious of birds.
Selby (1833) writes:
The haunts selected by these birds, for their residence during the daytime, are usually the closest brakes of birch and other brushy underwood, and where the ground, from the deep shade, Is nearly free from herbage; and, for this reason, thick fir plantations of 10 or 12 years' growth are a favorite resort. In woods that are very extensive they are generally found, and abound most in thickets by the sides of open glades, or where roads intersect, as by these they pass to and from their feeding ground at evening and in the dawn of the morning. Unless disturbed, they remain quietly at roost upon the ground during the whole day, but as soon as the sun is wholly below the horizon, they are in full activity, and taking flight nearly at the same instant, leave the woods and cover for the adjoining meadows, or open land, over which they disperse themselves, and are fully engaged in search of food during the whole night.
Mr. Slater (1898) observes:
It is well known that woodcocks follow certain routes to their favorite feeding grounds in the evening, as they also have preferences for certain woods and certain parts of woods to lie in during the day. In short, they are very peculiar and fanciful in their tastes, and are guided by circumstances not apparent to us in their liking for one place rather than for another which seems to our eyes to offer the same advantages. A wood above my father's late house, in Northumberland, was a regular passing place for cocks, and at dusk on any April or May evening a sight of half a dozen at least was a certainty, as they passed rapidly above the trees, announced, long before they themselves were visible, by their peculiar half squeak, half whistle. I have here seen them "tilting" in the air in the manner described by St. John and others. It has been suggested that this tilting (at which time they tumble and twirl about in the air in pairs and threes, apparently prodding at one another with their bills) is connected with pairing, but I can not think so, as I have witnessed it as late as the end of May. I rather think it is pure playfulness, as of children just out of school, after lying concealed and quiet most of the day.
According to Yarrell (1871), woodcocks sometimes become exhausted and fall into the sea on their migrations; but they do not always perish, for he says:
A woodcock when flushed on the coast has been known to settle on the sea, and when again disturbed rose without difficulty and flew away. Numerous instances are recorded of woodcocks alighting on the decks of ships in the English Channel and elsewhere. The rapidity of flight of this bird is at times so great that a pane of plate glass more than three-eighths of an inch thick has been smashed by the contact, and one was actually impaled on the weather cock of one of the churches in Ipswich.