POETS NES. Ss: LATE (UNE 105 
with many leafless boughs and trunks much 
bent, showed plainly how cold gales from 
north and east played havoc with what other- 
wise would have been fine trees. They told 
us also, as we shortly saw, that birds dis- 
criminate as well as human beings. Landing 
through a bank of sedges and high reeds we 
noticed that the undergrowth on this side 
close to the water’s edge was honeycombed 
with runs. The cause was plain, for, some- 
where not far off, a short dull croak told of 
the birds that made these runs their haunt, 
and set us looking in the neighbourhood for 
what we had not long to seek—a moorhen’s 
nest. 
Built some two feet from the ground, and 
like that of the sedge warbler amongst young 
erowth (Plate XXIV), the instinct of . the 
birds in this case too had placed it there, so 
that it would rise still higher as the reeds 
grew up. We counted twelve reddish-white, 
brown-speckled eggs in the nest, and one had 
fallen out, either ejected purposely, or knocked 
out as the frightened bird had hurriedly left 
