n "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 3) Biron says:

"O heavens, I have my wish!
Dumain transformed: four woodcocks in a dish."

The woodcock has generally been proverbial as a foolish bird--perhaps
because it is easily caught in springes or nets.[336] Thus the popular
phrase "Springes to catch woodcocks" meant arts to entrap
simplicity,[337] as in "Hamlet" (i. 3):

"Aye, springes to catch woodcocks."

[336] Dyce's "Glossary," p. 508.

[337] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 971.

A similar expression occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Loyal Subject"
(iv. 4):

"Go like a woodcock,
And thrust your neck i' th' noose."

"It seems," says Nares, "that woodcocks are now grown wiser by time, for
we do not now hear of their being so easily caught. If they were
sometimes said to be without brains, it was only founded on their
character, certainly not on any examination of the fact."[338] Formerly,
one of the terms for twilight[339] was "cock-shut time," because the net
in which cocks, _i. e._, woodcocks, were shut in during the twilight,
was called a "cock-shut." It appears that a large net was stretched
across a glade, and so suspended upon poles as to be easily drawn
together. Thus, in "Richard III." (v. 3), Ratcliff says:

"Thomas the Earl of Surrey, and himself,
Much about cock-shut time, from troop to troop,
Went through the army, cheering up the soldiers."

[338] See Willughby's "Ornithology," iii. section 1.

[339] Minsheu's "Guide into Tongues," ed. 1617.

In Ben Jonson's "Masque of Gypsies" we read:

"Mistress, this is only spite;
For you would not yesternight
Kiss him in the cock-shut light."

Sometimes it was erroneously written "cock-shoot." "Come, come away
then, a fine cock-shoot evening." In the "Two Noble Kinsmen" (iv. 1) we
find the term "cock-light."

_Wren._ The diminutive character of this bird is noticed in "A
Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. 1, song):

"The wren with little quill."

In "Macbeth" (iv. 2), Lady Macbeth says:

"the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl."

Considering, too, that as many as sixteen young ones have been found in
this little bird's nest, we can say with Grahame, in his poem on the
birds of Scotland:

"But now behold the greatest of this train
Of miracles, stupendously min