THE WATERHEN 591 



with the feet. Sometimes nests are found which show a marked taste 

 for gay colours. One, noted by Bishop Stanley, was fringed "as if 

 for effect alone," by a brilliant wreath of scarlet anemones. 1 Another, 

 an enormous structure, nearly three feet high, built against a piece of 

 wire netting stretched across the lake in Battersea Park, had " four 

 tail feathers of the peacock woven into its structure, and so arranged 

 that the four broad tips stood free above the nest, shading the cavity 

 and sitting-bird, like four great gorgeously coloured leaves." 2 It is 

 possible that this bird was moved by a desire to conceal its eggs, for 

 nests are not uncommonly found over which the ends of the immedi- 

 ately surrounding water-plants have been apparently drawn so as 

 to form a screen. A photograph of one is published by the brothers 

 Kearton in their British Birds' Nests? 



Additions are made to the nest after the eggs are laid. In 

 this the waterhen resembles ground-nesting birds, such as Terns 

 and Waders, and also the gannet. The waterhen's additions are at 

 times made with the definite purpose of keeping the eggs dry in time 

 of floods. 4 Why they are made at other times is not clear. 



It is well known that the waterhen builds supernumerary nests. 

 These are less finished structures than that in which the eggs are 

 laid, being merely small heaps of water-plants, or other material, 

 pressed flat on the top. They may be built before the one in which 

 the first clutch of eggs is laid. In a carefully recorded instance 

 a pair started with two nests, and one of the birds, probably the 

 female, was seen to use them to sit in, either for rest or with a view 

 to laying. Later, three more nests were added, and it was in one of 

 these that the eggs were actually laid. 5 According to observations 

 extending over several years by Mr. J. L. Bonhote, 6 another nest will 

 usually be built by one of the parents on or at the edge of the water 



1 Quoted by H. Stevenson in Birds of Norfolk, ii. 415, footnote. 



2 W. H Hudson, Birds in London, p. 96. 



3 See also Zoologist, 1904, p. 255; Stevenson, Birds of Norfolk, ii. 415. 



1 Cf. Yarrell, History of British Birds, iii. 165; Stevenson, op. cit., p. 416; E. Selous, 

 Bird-life Glimpses, p. 273. 



5 E. Selous, Bird-life Glimpses, pp. 265-9. 6 In litt. 



