BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH. 109 



righteousness of punishing the innocent to the point 

 of annihilation^ and ahowing the guilty to go free, 

 and straightway went to discover the bird seated 

 on her eggs, well and happy. 



After a good deal of trouble in hiding the 

 camera, I succeeded in figuring her at home. 



A curious thing about a brooding corncrake 

 is that when covering her ten or eleven large 

 eggs, she almost assumes the dimensions of a 

 common partridge, but directly she rises to her 

 feet, which she does with a peculiar kind of 

 quiet grace difficult to describe, she shuts up 

 like a book, and slips away with the noiseless 

 stealth of a shadow into the surrounding herbage. 



This species is very numerous in some parts 

 of the Hebrides. One day a crofter's boy and 

 I found four nests, and on another two, and in 

 each instance they were not fifty yards away 

 from the swampy shores of a loch. I have 

 noticed that in large clutches of ten or eleven, 

 one egg is frequently much hghter in ground 

 colour than the rest. 



The red-breasted merganser is quite a common 

 bird on many Highland lochs w^here trout are 

 plentiful. In Inverness-shire I have found as 

 many as three nests on an island of no greater 

 area than the ground upon which the average 

 suburban viUa is built, and our illustration of a 

 brooding female was secured on the mainland 



