86 The Last Home 



of five or six on bushes, or rose to skim over the 

 water in a half-hearted way, and light again. 



A pair of Redshanks crossed us once or twice, 

 flying in line, one just behind the other, whistling 

 loudly as they flew. Cuckoos called, and overhead 

 Snipe poised 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 a half a 

 dozen yards of one which stood alone and unmis- 

 takable 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 an hour we looked 

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

 recrossing 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 



