BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH. 109 



righteousness of punishing the innocent to the point 

 of annihilation, and allowing the guilty to go free, 

 and straightway went to discover the bird seated 

 on her eggs, well and happy. 



After a good deal of trouble in hiding the 

 camera, I succeeded in figuring her at home. 



A curious thing about a brooding corncrake 

 is that when covering her ten or eleven large 

 eggs, she almost assumes the dimensions of a 

 common partridge, but directly she rises to her 

 feet, which she does with a peculiar kind of 

 quiet grace difficult to describe, she shuts up 

 like a book, and slips away with the noiseless 

 stealth of a shadow into the surrounding herbage. 



This species is very numerous in some parts 

 of the Hebrides. One day a crofter's boy and 

 I found four nests, and on another two, and in 

 each instance they were not fifty yards away 

 from the. swampy shores of a loch. I have 

 noticed that in large clutches of ten or eleven, 

 one egg is frequently much lighter in ground 

 colour than the rest. 



The red-breasted merganser is quite a common 

 bird on many Highland lochs where trout are 

 plentiful. In Inverness-shire I have found as 

 many as three nests on an island of no greater 

 area than the ground upon which the average 

 suburban villa is built, and our illustration of a 

 brooding female was secured on the mainland 



