DABCHICKS IN MOORHEN'S NEST 317 



more vigorous and higher jump than they were 

 accustomed to take when getting into their real 

 nest. All this seemed to point to its being a 

 moorhen's and not a dabchick's nest, and when I 

 came down and looked at it more closely — it being 

 only a few feet from the bank — that is what it 

 seemed to be. The other nest near it seemed, still 

 more obviously, a moorhen's, but this only because 

 it was newly made, and had not yet been pressed 

 down. In both, the growing flags had been turned 

 down, to aid in the construction. Now, both these 

 nests were near to the one which I had been watch- 

 ing, and one of them was not more than a few 

 paces off. If we say a dozen — and I do not think 

 it could have been more — then the three lay along 

 a length of twenty-four paces of the stream, nor 

 was there anything in the configuration of the latter, 

 to cut off the owners of the one from those of the 

 others. It seems, indeed, quite impossible that in 

 this tiny little stream, which I was constantly 

 scanning, up and down, I should never have seen 

 more than one pair of dabchicks, at the same time, 

 had three, or even two, pairs of them built within 

 so limited an area. There was, indeed, one other 

 pair — and, I think, from having watched the place 

 through the winter, only one — in this lower part 

 of the stream, but in another reach of it, some little 

 way off, where they had a nest of their own. In 

 this nest I had seen one of them sitting with its 

 chick, which was about half-grown, and therefore 

 more than twice the size of the largest of my own 

 birds' brood. I can, therefore, have no doubt that 

 the birds I saw in these two later-used extra nests, 



