WATERHEN 



Gallznula ckloropus 



HE Waterhen, or Moorhen, as it is often called, is generally 

 to be seen about the shores of our lakes, streams, and 

 ornamental ponds. It is a very common and widely 

 distributed resident throughout the British Islands, and 

 in large ponds full of reeds and overgrown with water- 

 plants, large numbers of these birds may often be seen 

 swimming together, splashing through the water after 

 each other, or swimming along in their curious bobbing manner, catching the 

 insects off the rushes and water-plants. 



It is a very pretty sight to see these graceful birds walking gingerly 

 along the top of the floating weeds or dense masses of the leaves of the 

 water-lily. When suddenly alarmed on the water, the Moorhen usually dives 

 at once and swims with great rapidity under water to the nearest cover of 

 reeds or water-plants; there it will often lie hid for a considerable length of 

 time with only its bill projecting above the surface. Like the Grebes, the 

 Moorhen will dive with its young, holding them under its wing and conveying 

 them to a place of safety. In severe winters the Waterhen leaves its haunts, 

 which have been completely frozen up, and betakes itself to some farmyard or 

 poultry-pen where it contrives to find a living till thaw sets in and it can 

 return to its usual quarters. On such occasions they are very tame, and 

 I have often seen them in a poultry-yard feeding among the hens quite 

 unconcernedly. 



The Waterhen is one of our early breeders, especially in a mild early 

 spring. I have taken their eggs, highly incubated, from a pond near 

 Callander as early as the 6th of April. It frequently rears two, and some- 

 times three, broods in the year, the last brood being sometimes very late, as I 

 once found a nest containing four perfectly fresh eggs at the Lake of Monteith 

 on the 27th of July ; possibly, however, the second brood had been destroyed. 



The nest is not remarkable, as a rule, for its neatness of construction, 

 being very often little more than a mass of reeds mixed with rank grass and 

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