468 RALLID.^. 



water. When induced to change the scene it steps ashore, 

 and, with a peculiar jerking motion of its tail, showing 

 the white feathers beneath, and very conspicuous by its 

 bright red bill, which harmonizes pleasantly with the 

 green grass, it struts about and picks up worms, insects, 

 snails, or seeds, with unflagging perseverance, making no 

 stay anywhere, and often running rapidly. If surprised 

 on these occasions, it either makes for the water, or flies 

 off in a line for some thick hedge or patch of brush-wood, 

 from which it is very difficult to dislodge it. 



Its mode of life is pretty much the same all the year 

 round ; it is not a traveller from choice. Only in severe 

 weather, when its haunts are bound up Avith ice, it is per- 

 force compelled to shift its quarters. It then travels by 

 night and searches for unfrozen streams. At such times 

 it appears occasionally in pretty large numbers in places 

 where usually a few only resort. When the south of 

 Europe is visited by severe frosts it is supposed even to 

 cross the Mediterranean, it having been observed in Algeria, 

 feeding in marshes in half-social parties, where a day or 

 two before none had been seen. To the faculties of swim- 

 ming and running it adds that of perching on trees ; this 

 it does habitually, as it roosts in low bushy trees ; and 

 it has besides the power of wallcing cleverly along the 

 branches. 



In the neighbourhood of houses where it has long been 

 undisturbed, it loses much of its shy nature, and will not 

 only allow itself to be approached within a short distance, 

 but, becoming half- domesticated, will consort with the 

 poultry in the farm-yard, and come with them to be fed. 

 It is fond also of visiting the kitchen-garden, where it is 

 apt to make itself unwelcome, by helping itself to the 

 tenderest and best of the vegetables. Bishop Stanley, in 

 his entertaining Book on Birds, gives some highly amusing 

 anecdotes of the Gallinule. 



It builds its nest on the stump of a tree, or in a bush 



