196 



SUMMER 



It runs about as large as a dabchick, and is dingy greyish- 

 brown above, with a paler throat and breast. These are the 

 hobbledehoy moorhens, children of April and May, now 

 mewing their youth by the waters of midsummer and the 

 dog-days. In August we shall see the cleaner greys and 

 olives of the adult plumage gradually replacing their in- 

 determinate shades. 



Dabchicks are street-arabs in all their moods and 

 gestures ; but moorhens are an extremely respectable race, 

 with the air of being genuinely shocked at any violent or 

 irregular conduct by the waterside. They seldom err, and 



if occasionally they 

 wander into gardens 

 and eat such strange 

 meat as tomatoes and 

 hens' eggs, this is 

 surely a mistake of 

 inexperience. Even 

 the dull-looking elder 

 brothers are said to help their parents in bringing up the 

 younger broods ; and it may be suspected that the greener 

 and slighter June nests are often of their building, since 

 the architecture closely resembles that of the platforms 

 which they make among the reeds. The sharp, shocked 

 cries of the moorhens break out by the side of the river all 

 day, and irregularly through the night. They are a fearful 

 race, and their underworld is full of sharklike pike. Another 

 harsh and persistent cry is often heard nowadays by southern 

 streams where it was unfamiliar twenty years ago. This is 

 the anxious note of the snipe with young, calling ' kek-kek- 

 kek-kek' endlessly from the sky above, as some intruder 

 wanders over the water-meadows, where the young are 

 hidden. The snipe's more familiar drumming is sometimes 



