92 APPENDIX: NO. LIX. 
comfortable. Some four hours later, that is, between four and five 
in the morning, we came again to the west side of the hill; there 
lay the Crane, head and neck still invisible ; we may have whispered 
too loud, for she soon raised her head. I now wished to see how she 
would leave the nest, whether crouchingly or not. I took a line not 
directly towards it, curving more upon it as I advanced, of course 
taking care to keep my eyes in a different direction. When I 
believed that I was just opposite, I looked, as I thought, towards the 
place, which might be about twenty paces off, but I did not at first 
recognize the bird. She was a few feet from the exact spot I had 
expected, and I unconsciously took her for a grey stone, till my eye 
turned directly on her. [had then just time to mark her position 
with her head drawn in between her shoulders, when, having caught 
my glance, she rose steadily into the air. In one part of the nest 
was a damp spot from the water of the marsh having soaked through. 
The eggs now lay touching each other. When I came to blow them, 
I found to my surprise that they were one or two days sat upon. 
In 1855 this nest, as Ludwig informed me, was robbed by a Fielfras 
(Gulo borealis). I had the pleasure of showing it, towards the end 
of the summer of the same year, to my friend Mr. Alfred Newton, 
who thought the difficulties of the bog fully repaid by the sight even 
of an empty Crane’s nest. We found on this occasion, on examining 
the materials of the nest, old pieces of egg-shell, showing that it was 
the same nest that had been used in previous years. 
I must not go into long particulars concerning the nest of 1854 in 
Khario uoma. JI found the two eggs on the 22nd of May, in a spot 
only two feet from the nest of the preceding year. It consisted 
of not more than a handful or so of whitish sedge grass, about 
twenty inches across and two or three inches only above the level of 
the water of the submerged parts of the marsh, close to the edge 
of which it was situated. There was a kind of creeping moss about 
it, and one or two very low-lying shoots of sallow. 
It was placed in an open part of the middle of the south-east wing 
of the marsh, I have a memorandum that there was not then a leaf 
unrolled, the only visible signs of summer being a kind of Carew 
coming into flower on the hummocks, and yet the mghts were quite 
as light as the day. I kept watch at the distance of nearly half a 
mile; but unfortunately the smoke of my fire blew towards the nest. 
I saw a Crane go sailing down, and afterwards the pair walking 
together, when they indulged in a minuet or some more active dance, 
skipping into the air as the Demoiselles sometimes do in the Zoological 
Gardens. Once or so I saw the beak of one pointed perpendicularly 
to the sky, and a couple of seconds afterwards the loud trumpet 
struck my ear. It was two or three o’clock in the morning before a 
bird came on to the nest, and even then she was soon off, but again 
came back, sitting always with her head up. She left it very wild, 
when at last we advanced from our bivouac. In this watch I saw 
and heard many interesting birds, amongst them a Hen Harrier 
(Circus cyancus). Also a pair of Goshawks (Astur palumbarius) 
