412 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
But clear that ditch of its weeds, and trim the banks of 
the flags and sedges, and, for a time at least, you banish 
the water-hens more effectually even than by the use of 
the gun. . 
Mr. Lubbock truly remarks, “though this bird-is so 
often found exactly in the same situations as the coot, 
although they nest and bring up their young together, 
no birds differ more in habits.” The sights and sounds 
of human habitation, which drive the coot still further 
into its reedy fastnesses, have attractions for the wary 
but semi-domesticated water-hen, which feeds with the 
marshman’s fowls, breeds near his garden, and revenges 
itself for the loss of an early sitting of eggs by repeated 
raids upon his vegetable produce. In fact the water- 
hen has a great partiality for gardens if adjoming the 
main river, or skirted by a brook to which they can 
retire on the least alarm; and, whether in outlying 
plantations, or in close vicinity to the keeper’s cottage, 
will devour barley and other grain with avidity, for, as 
the author above quoted states, they ‘will arrive at the 
keeper’s whistle even before the pheasants”; and this 
not merely when hard weather has deprived them of 
other means of subsistence. 
In the Northrepps plantations, near Cromer, a few 
of these birds are found constantly in the breeding 
season, though rarely seen during the winter months, 
and their nests are frequently placed from six to ten 
feet from the ground in the silver firs, from which the 
young are, no doubt, conveyed to terra firma in the 
prehensile feet of their parents.* There are only a 
few small pits of water in the parish at all adapted 
In the “ Zoologist” for 1854 (p. 4867), Mr. Samuel Gurney, of 
Carshalton, states that a water hen which had built on the branch 
of a fir tree overhanging the river, and a few feet above the water, 
was seen to “fly down with two of her young brood, one in each 
foot, from the nest.” 
