on Water Bails calling. 191


grounds were frozen hard we were visited this winter by Snipe and

Water Rails.


There were seven Snipe; each morning my dressing was

delayed through watching them. There they were, two, perhaps, on

one little island, three on the delta, a single one here and another

there, probing like little truffle-hunters. I do not know when Snipe

sleep, for they seem to feed by day and fly about at night; perhaps

they snatch a wink just before daylight. When one came up-stream

upon these Snipe they would rise in a wisp and come right over one’s

head in the easiest of driving shots. They never headed up the

stream, for that would lead into the hills. I hoped that one pair

might stay and nest, but the feeding is very limited, the herbage in

summer would be much too rank, and at any rate as soon as ever the

frost broke they were off. So much for the Snipe ; we set out to

speak of Water Rails.


Before coming to Ashford I had lived in a Water Rail country

for some years—in the Test Valley, on the other side of this

county, and that district I repeatedly visit in the winter for shooting

and in the summer for fishing. The valleys of the river Test and of

the river Anton are great breeding grounds for Snipe and for Water-

Rails ; the dogs often put up rails when we are snipe or duck

shooting, and in the summer when fishing one sees and hears them in

the reeds and on the weed-beds, but both those rivers are too deep

for them to wade in. It has therefore been rather a surprise to

find how regularly they feed in water in which they can just wade

with the water up to their bodies, and how frequently they swim

across those places that are a little too deep for this. Another small

point that is new to me, a point which one would hardly perhaps

suspect from the soft feathering of a Water Rail’s head, is this: that

for long periods together they will feed with their heads below water.

It is quite unusual to see a Moorhen putting its head below the

water, though Coots of course often do it. But a Water Rail will

work its way inch by inch up the bed of the stream feeding entirely

on something—probably Gammarus—it finds among the stones at the

bottom. I thought I knew all the Water Rail’s notes ; but never until

now have I heard its most remarkable breeding-call. No book but

one that 1 have makes any attempt to convey this accurately or.



