2 86 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



for I think that I have seen a hint of it, on a few 

 occasions, and on one in particular, of which I made 

 a note. Two birds, in this case, had been floating, 

 for some time, quietly on the waterj when one of 

 them, suddenly, threw up its wings, waved them 

 violently and excitedly, and scudded, thus, rather 

 than flew, along the surface, into a reed-bed not far 

 ofl^. Before it had got there the other moorhen, 

 first making a quick turn or two in the water, threw 

 up its wings also, and scudded after its friend, in 

 just the same way. Then came from the reeds, 

 and was continued for a little time, that melan- 

 choly-sounding, wailing, clucking note that I have 

 so often listened to, wondering what it might mean, 

 and convinced that it meant something interesting. 

 But if " the heart of man at a foot's distance 

 is unknowable,'' as a Chinese proverb says — and 

 doubtless rightly — that it is, so is the whole of a 

 moorhen, when it has got as far as that, amongst 

 reeds and rushes. Here, however — and I have seen 

 something very similar, which began on the land — 

 we have the sudden, contagious excitement, a apropos 

 de rien it would seem, the motion of the wings — 

 not so very common with moorhens, under ordinary 

 circumstances — and the darting to a certain spot, 

 with the cries immediately proceeding from it : all 

 which, together, bears a not inconsiderable resem- 

 blance to the more finished performance of the 

 Ypecaha rail, a bird belonging to the same family 

 as the moorhen. 



It is a pity, I think, that our commoner birds, 

 when related to foreign ones in which some 

 strikingly peculiar habit has long been matter for 



