GRUS COMMUNIS. 59 
Presently the boys called out that they had found some young Cranes. 
Running up I saw a Crane rise just before me from among some 
thick bushes, not twenty yards from where the boys had been shout- 
ing for some time. I found the little bird standing upright and 
walking or running about feebly, but with some facility, and chirping. 
The old birds were now flying at a little height from the ground in 
a great circle round us, more and more distant, flapping their wings 
with rather a curious rhythm, throwing them suddenly, in making 
the return-stroke, more over the back than usual. They first made 
a kind of clattering noise, and then trumpeted occasionally, flying of 
course with legs and neck stretched out. The young were tawny 
beneath, changing to buff (or chestnut) upon the upper parts. They 
held themselves up well. As I played with one, he soon became 
friendly and pecked at gnats on my fingers, and when at last I went 
away, he followed me about half as quick as I walked for some 
distance, no doubt taking me for one of his long-legged parents. At 
a little distance I found a third young one’. They could not have 
been hatched many days. All our efforts to find the nest were vain. 
When I got to some distance I saw one of the parent birds alight 
near where the young were left; but returning in half an hour I 
could not hear or see the least trace of any of the family, though 
before the young had been chirping (like other young birds) so as to 
be heard at certainly one hundred yards’ distance. It is evident that 
these birds run as soon as they are hatched, and now the old egg- 
skins lying in the nest is explained. We lay for many hours just by 
where the young had been, partly I by myself and partly with the 
four other people, indeed we made a bivouac on the spot and a 
rendezvous for the receipt of provision from the by [village]. I 
should add that a piece of long down in the nest, evidently [not ?] a 
Goose’s or Swan’s, strengthened my conviction that it was a last 
year’s Crane’s. 
§ 3177. Fragment from hatched-out nest.—\Warto-uoma, 29 
June, 1853. 
The principal object of my going to the marsh [Karto-uoma] to-day 
was to see the Crane’s nest, which had been found by Herr Salomon 
1 [This seems to have been a mistake, and Mr. Wolley must have come across 
one of the birds he had seen before, which had shifted its position. There was 
certainly not a second pair of Cranes in the marsh, and there is no evidence that 
the brood ever exceeds two in number.—Ip. | 
