420 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
broad, and when its pace indicates the same latent 
powers possessed in no small degree by our migratory 
rails, incapable though they appear under ordinary 
circumstances of sustained exertion on the wing. The 
voluntary nocturnal flight* of this species also in sum- 
mer, when its peculiar cry strikes upon the ear as it 
circles round and round over its marshy haunts, is in 
like manner in direct contrast to its ordinary habits 
by day. 
Of the numbers bred annually on the broads them- 
selves it is impossible to form any conception from the 
few which may be seen here and there in the day time; 
it is only in the dusk of a summer’s evening, when they 
steal from their hiding places, and are either dimly 
seen, threading their way against a dark background of 
sedges, or clearly defined for an instant as they pass 
from shadow to shadow, through the last gleam of 
daylight on the water, that any approximate idea can 
be formed. At night, also, their presence is indicated, 
on all sides, by their loud notes and constant splashings 
and rustlings as they play amongst the reeds. 
Whilst the coots when fairly frozen out on the broads, 
quit their summer haunts, to a bird, for the coast and 
its saltmarshes, the water-hens, as Mr. Lubbock remarks, 
“either not having inclination or ability to migrate, 
are terribly cut up.” Many, it is true, betake them- 
selves to the adjoining fields and stack-yards, but others 
still remain till every pool is frozen over, when starved 
alike with cold and hunger they fall victims in their 
enfeebled state to the carnivorous tastes of the grey 
crows and four-footed vermin. Though scarcely to be 
termed gregarious at any other time, they collect 
* Messrs. A. and H. Matthews, in the “ Zoologist” for 1849 
(p. 2432) drew attention, from their own observations, to this habit 
of the water-hen, which has been rarely noticed by authors though 
mentioned by Gould in his “ Birds of Great Britain.” 
