308 THE WATER-HEN. 



the water ; and artlessly formed as it is of a few rushes, one 

 might suppose that it would he easily discovered, which would 

 be the case hut for the caution adopted hy the hird, who, 

 before she quits her eggs, covers them carefully up, for the 

 joint purpose of concealment and warmth. A person fishing 

 on the hanks of the Thames, when passing a willow-bed, 

 heard a slight rustling motion : suspecting it to proceed from 

 some water-bird, he kneeled down and remained perfectly 

 quiet, when the noise ceased. On rising and looking about, 

 he saw a Water-Hen busily employed in collecting dry rushes 

 and flags, and laying them one by one over her eggs deposited 

 in one of these bare nests close beside her. It was not long 

 before she had completely hidden them ; and then, looking 

 round with a cautious glance, not aware that her motions 

 were observed, softly and silently glided away amongst the 

 reeds and disappeared. On a nearer approach, strange to 

 say, the nest was with difficulty found, and no one who had 

 not previously ascertained its existence was thereabouts could 

 possibly have discovered it. 



We have said that they usually build either upon a level 

 with, or very little raised above the water, but not invariably 

 so, for although almost entirely confined to the water, as 

 their abiding as well as feeding-place, they will not only 

 perch on trees when roosting, but even build their nests at a 

 considerable elevation above the ground. An instance of this 

 occurred in Surrey, where the attention of a person who had 

 landed upon an island in the middle of a large pond, was 

 drawn to a mass of dry rushes, flags, and reeds, strangely 

 heaped together, about twenty feet above the ground, in a 

 spruce fir-tree. Curiosity induced him to climb up, when, 

 to his surprise, out crept a Water-Hen, which dropped into 

 the pond and made off towards the shore. 



But it is not only in their instinctive attachments and 

 habits that they merit notice ; the following anecdote proves 

 that they are gifted with a sense of observation approaching 

 to something very like reasoning faculties. At a gentleman's 

 house, in Staffordshire, the Pheasants are fed out of one of 

 those boxes described in page 287, the lid of which rises with 



