172 THE LAST ENGLISH HOME 



themselves, drumming and bleating, and dropped like 

 stones as they neared the ground. In the nest of one 

 of them we saw a beautiful instance of 'protective 

 colouring,' the marvel of which never loses its 

 freshness. 



The keeper the day before our visit had found the 

 nest, and for our benefit had marked the spot. It 

 was in a line between two bushes, within half a dozen 

 yards of one which stood alone and unmistakable on 

 flat ground, with nothing on it bigger than a few short 

 sprits which could hide the nest. As we neared the 

 spot, the bird, to show there could be no mistake in the 

 mark, rose close by us. 



For more than a quarter of a hour we looked three 

 pairs of eyes, one pair the keeper's crossing and re- 

 crossing every foot of the ground, and were giving up 

 the search as hopeless, thinking that a Crow perhaps 

 had hunted the marsh in the early morning before us, 

 when in the middle of a tussock of sprits at our feet 

 we saw a Maltese cross of very green eggs, mottled 

 irregularly with brownish red, exactly imitating the bed 

 of deep moss from which the sprits grew. 



The colour of Snipes' and many other eggs is very 

 volatile, and no one who has only seen them ' blown ' in 

 a cabinet can quite realise their beauty when seen in 

 the nest, fresh-laid and untouched. 



At intervals of our tramp on shore we took the boat, 

 rowing across corners of the Broad, or pushing our way 

 through ditches or narrow twisting channels. We saw 

 Coots' nests in plenty, and one unfinished nest of the 



