276 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



brilliancy, or if the woodpecker of either sex were 

 first green, then brown, and then green again. If 

 the young moorhen, having exchanged its scarlet 

 cere for a much less showy one, kept this latter 

 through life, we should, I suppose, assume that the 

 first had been acquired long ago, and then lost for 

 some reason, possibly because change of habits, or 

 circumstances, had made it more of a disadvantage, 

 by being conspicuous, than it had remained an 

 advantage, by being attractive. Are we, now, to 

 think that, having acquired, and then lost, the 

 crimson, the bird has subsequently reacquired it ^ 

 If so, what has been the reason for this ? Were 

 green ceres, for some time, preferred to scarlet ones ? 

 This hardly seems probable, since the green, in this 

 instance, is pale and dull. However, birds are but 

 birds, and even amongst ourselves anything may be 

 fashionable, even downright ugliness, as is almost 

 equally well seen in a milliner's shop or a picture 

 gallery. As far as the mere loss of beauty is con- 

 cerned, a parallel example is offered by the coot, 

 which, in its young state, is all-glorious, about the 

 head, with orange and purple, which changes, later, 

 to a uniform, sooty black. But the coot stops there ; 

 it does not get back, later on, the colours it has lost. 

 Young moorhens are almost, if not quite, as 

 precocious as chickens. Out of three that were in 

 the egg, the day before, I found two, once, sitting in 

 the nest, from which the shells had already been 

 removed. The nest was on a snag in the midst of 

 a small pond, or, rather, pool, so that I could not 

 get to it ; but, as I walked up to the water's edge, 

 both the chicks evinced anxiety, though in varying 



