CRANE. 185 



making a rather loud ' cheeping ' cry. They seemed as if 

 they could have left such eggs as Cranes were supposed to 

 lay only a very few days. I say supposed, for in England 

 we know nothing of the eggs which are called Cranes', but 

 which may have come from any part of the world. They 

 were straightly made little things, short in the beak, livid in 

 the eye, thick in the knees, covered with a moderately long 

 chestnut or tawny-coloured down, darker on the upper parts, 

 softening away into paler underneath. As I fondled one of 

 them it began to peck playfully at my hands and legs, and 

 when at length I rose to go away, it walked after me, taking 

 me, as I supposed, for one of its long-legged parents. I had 

 only just before been plucking from it some bits of down to 

 keep ; for, valuable as I knew it to be in a natural-history 

 point of view, I could not make up my mind to take its life. 

 As soon as I saw its inclination to follow, I took to double- 

 quick time, and left it far behind. Its confidence was the 

 more remarkable, as, all the time we were with it, the old 

 Cranes were flying round near the ground at some distance 

 from us, their necks and feet fully stretched out as usual, 

 but with a remarkable sudden casting up of the ^ings in a 

 direction over the back after each downward stroke, in place 

 of the ordinary steady movement. At the same time they 

 were making a peculiar kind of low clattering or somewhat 

 gurgling noise, of which it is very difficult to give an in- 

 telligible description ; and now and then they broke out into 

 a loud trumpeting call not unlike their grand ordinary notes, 

 which, audible at so great a distance, gladden the ears of 

 the lover of nature. As we went away I saw one of the 



Cranes alight where we had left the young 



" The following year, 1854, on the 20th of May, I went 

 with Ludwig, my servant lad, to look for the Crane's nest in 

 ' Iso noma.'' We saw no birds ; and the spot where the nest 

 had been the preceding year was not easy to find in so 

 extensive a marsh. So wc quartered our ground, working 

 carefully up one strip of harder bog and down the next. 

 After some hours of heavy walking I saw the eggs — joyful 

 sight ! — on an adjacent slip in a perfectly open place. The 



VOL. III. B B 



