Grus communis. 67 



I had only just before been plucking from it some bits of down to keep ; for, 

 valuable as I knew it to be in a natural-history point of view, I could not make up my 

 mind to take its life. As soon as I saw its inclination to follow, I took to double-quick 

 time, and left it far behind. Its confidence was the more remarkable as, all the time 

 we were with it, the old Cranes were flying round near the ground at some distance 

 from us, their necks and feet fully stretched out as usual, but with a remarkable 

 sudden casting up of the wings in a direction over the back after each downward 

 stroke, in place of ordinary steady movement. At the same time they were making 

 a peculiar kind of low clattering or somewhat gurgling noise, of which it is very 

 difficult to give an intelligible description, and now and then they broke out into a 

 loud trumpeting call not unlike their grand ordinary notes, which, audible at so great 

 a distance, gladden the ears of the lover of nature. As we went away I saw one of the 

 Cranes alight where we had left the young. Later in the day I had a longing wish to 

 have another look at my young friends. I thought of the old naturalists — who would 

 have called them " peepers " I suppose — one of whom wrote of the Crane in our fens 

 " ejus pipiones so:pissime vidi." To see them nowadays twice in a life, and that not in 

 England, would be a consolation. But it was not to be so ; we came back to the spot 

 where we had parted with them, rested for three or four hours round a stone that 

 projected from the marsh, but we saw and heard nothing more of either old or young 

 Cranes. In a morass with another name (which it took from a hill that overlooked it), 

 " Kliarto noma," but which was only separated from " Iso uoma" by an interval of a 

 mile or two of birch thicket. There were also Cranes, and I found their nest with the 

 egg-shells lying in the water by it, and so many c(uill-feathers scattered about, that I 

 almost feared some accident had happened to the sitting bird. 



The following year, 1854, on the 20th May, I went with only Ludwig, my servant- 

 lad, to look for the Crane's nest in " Iso itoma." We saw no birds, and the spot where 

 the nest had been the preceding year was not easy to find in so extensive a marsh. So 

 we quartered our ground, working carefully up one strip of harder bog, and down the 

 next. After some hours of heavy walking I saw the eggs — joyful sight ! — on an 

 adjacent slip, in a perfectly open place. The two eggs lay with their long diameters 

 parallel to one another, and there was just room for a third egg to be placed between 

 them. The nest, about two feet across, was nearly flat, and chiefly of light-coloured 

 grass or hay, loosely matted together, scarcely more than two inches in depth, and 

 raised only two or three inches from the general level of the swamp. There were 

 higher sites close by, and many of them would have seemed more eligible. 



It was just at the lowest edge of the strip, but so much exposed, that I thought 

 I should be able to see even the eggs themselves from a spot at a considerable distance, 

 to which I proposed to go. There was a common story amongst the people of the 

 country, that the Crane, if its nest were disturbed, would carry oS its eggs under 

 its wing to another place, so I purposely handled one of the eggs, and hung up a 

 bit of birch bark on a birch tree beyond the nest, as a mark by which to direct 

 my telescope. Then I went with Ludwig to a clump of spruce growing on some 

 dry sandy land which rose out of the midst of the marsh. Here I made a 

 good ambuscade of spruce boughs, crept into it, got Ludwig to cover me 

 so that even the Crane's eye could not distinguish me, and sent him to 

 make a fire to sleep by on the far side of the wood, with strict orders on no 

 account to come near my hiding-place. I kept my glass in the direction of the nest, 

 but it was long before I saw anything stir. In the meantime the marsh was by no 

 means quiet; rufis were holding something between a European ball and an East 

 Indian nautch. Several times "keet root, keet root," to use the words by which the 

 Finns express the sound, told where the snipes were. A cock pintail dashed into a bit 

 of water, calling loudly for its mate. The full melancholy wailing of the Black-throated 

 Diver came from the river ; watch dogs were barking in the distance ; I heard the 



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