Their Eggs and Nests. 157 



reason also to know that it bred at Tolleshunt D'Arcy, 

 in Essex. The nest is made often in an osier ground 

 or among thick water plants, and composed of differ- 

 ent kinds of aquatic herbage. The eggs are from six 

 to nine or ten in number, and seldom quite white in 

 hue ; usually they are much more like pale or faded 

 specimens of the Land-Rail's e.gg^^ the spots being both 

 fewer and fainter — Fig. Q, plate IX, 



%' MOOR ^^.^—{Gallinula chloropiis). 



Water Hen, Gallinule, Moat Hen, Marsh Hen. — 

 Few nest banters, however young, but know the nest 

 and eggs of this very common bird. I have in many 

 cases seen it almost domesticated, and constantly 

 taking its food among domestic fowls, and sometimes 

 even almost from the hands of human creatures. Its 

 nest is made in somewhat various places. I have 

 seen it amid the sedges growing in the water near the 

 edge of a marsh-ditch or the like, on dry tussocky 

 tumps near a sheet of water, among the herbage and 

 willow stubs not far from the same mere, built upon 

 masses of fallen but not decayed bulrushes and flags, 

 at the edge of a pond, on a bough projecting several 

 feet horizontally from the bank over and resting 

 upon (or partly in) the water of a running stream, 

 nay, even in a branch or top of a thick tree, or among 

 the ivy which mantled its trunk and wreathed its 

 branches. In it are laid six, seven, or eight eggs, of a 

 reddish-white colour, sparingly speckled and spotted 

 with reddish-brown. The eggs have been known to 

 be removed by the parent birds under circumstances 

 gf peril awaiting them — from a flood, for instance — 



