THE SPOTTED-CRAKE 579 



forty-eight were brought to him that evening by a peasant who had 

 trained his dog to search for the nests. 1 The nest itself has already 

 been described, as well as the eggs, in the " Classified Notes " (p. 559). 

 With regard to the period of incubation and the share of the sexes, 

 our information is very imperfect. Mr. R. B. Lodge ascertained that 

 the incubating bird shot from the nest in one case was a male, and 

 Naumann speaks of the hen as brooding ; while Ziemer in one case 

 after killing a hen with an egg ripe for laying, found the male on the 

 nest, which only contained a single egg. As soon as the young are 

 hatched the egg-shells are carefully removed. The young, covered 

 with thick, delicate, coal-black down, remain in the nest only long 

 enough to get thoroughly dry, and then leave the nest entirely. Mr. 

 Rope, who found a nest with eggs actually hatching, noticed that 

 when the incubating bird slipped off the nest, which contained six 

 chicks (one dead) and three eggs, the young scrambled out and 

 squatted about singly round the nest. After vainly watching for the 

 return of the old bird for some time, he looked again into the nest, 

 and found that all five chicks had climbed in again. 2 Ziemer 

 describes the first notes of the young as a fine, very high and sharp 

 piping note, sounding like " Bl-e" close at hand, or, at a little 

 distance, "j" (or, as we should write it, "Bee"). After a day or two 

 one hears a loud " Kryoeck" and the note, which has already been 

 described as a pairing-note, seems to be also used as a call-note for 

 the young on the part of the old birds. 



The young grow fast, and when only two or three days old are 

 able to swim and run rapidly, so that even a good dog finds it a 

 difficult task to capture them. Ziemer has only heard one old bird in 

 attendance, probably the hen, but it is evident that the male must 

 take some part in the tending of the young, for having shot a female 

 on August 6th, his dog caught a male two days later at the same spot, 

 and injured it so that he was obliged to kill it. He then found, to his 

 great surprise, that the latter bird was accompanied by a brood of 



1 Seebohm, History of British Birds, ii. p. 541. * Zoologist, 1891, p. 92. 



