4* BRITISH BIRDS. WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



I 



possible, and where they could keep a good look-out on all sides. Their whooping 

 and trumpeting enlivened the watches of the night, and till dawn we could hear 

 the flocks passing overhead on their way to their quarters close by." 



Of the nesting of this species little was known until the discovery of Mr. J. 

 Woolley of the breeding places of the Crane in Lapland. He ascertained that 

 the nests were made in large marshes composed of soft bog, where one generally 

 sinks up to the knees or even up to the middle, and that they are composed of 

 small twigs mixed with sedgy grass, a tolerably dry spot being usually selected. 

 The eggs are two in number, and of a rich brown colour, with dark spots. 

 Professor H. H. Giglioli, in his notes on the avifauna of Italy, (" Ibis," April, 

 1881), states that: "It is not generally known that the Crane breeds in Italy, 

 a few pairs do so every year in the extensive marshes along the Adriatic, north 

 of Venice ; I have received a chick in the down from that locality, presented by 

 Count Ninni. The peasants there are in the habit of robbing the nests, and place 

 the eggs to hatch under hens ; they sell the young birds to be kept alive in 

 gardens." 



The Crane also breeds in Spain. Mr. Howard Saunders, in a foot-note to 

 Mr. Abel Chapman's " Rough Notes on Spanish Ornithology," (" Ibis," 1884, p. 

 88), writing of the feral Camels in the Goto de Donana, says : " finding my 

 statement as to the breeding of the Crane in that neighbourhood was received 

 with much incredibility, I kept the apparition of the Camels to myself. I 

 possessed the eggs of the Crane to convince the sceptics, but I could not have 

 produced a Camel." 



The young, which are clothed with tawny brown, are able to run about as 

 soon as they are hatched. Mr. Woolley described the little things in chestnut 

 coloured down, and so tame that as he handled one of them it began to pick playfully 

 at his hands and legs, and when he rose to walk away from the nest followed 

 him, taking him, as he supposed, for one of its long-legged parents, although 

 he had only just been plucking some of the bits of down from it, and with the 

 spirit of a true naturalist, he adds : " valuable as I knew it to be in a natural 

 history point of view, I could not make up my mind to take its life." 



The young assume the grey plumage during the first year, but do not 

 develop the elongated plumes from the back, which are so characteristic of the 

 bird in full plumage. 



The colouration of the Crane is very distinct. The general character of the 

 plumage is ashy-gre}-, which is often discoloured with brown on the back, especially 

 after the nesting season. It is suggested that this alteration is the result of the 

 birds plastering their backs with earth when on the nest. The inner wing-feathers 



