THE WATER HEN 



GALLINULA CHLOROPUS 



LOCAL names in surrounding counties : 



STATUS IN BRITISH AVIFAUNA : A common and widely 

 distributed resident, found everywhere in suitable lo- 

 calities. 



RADIAL DISTRIBUTION WITHIN FIFTEEN MILES OF ST. 

 PAUL'S : The Water Hen or Moor Hen is another of 

 London's most familiar birds, made so by the fact of its 

 frequenting almost every public pond and ornamental 

 water in the Metropolis. It is common in Victoria 

 Park, St. James's Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, 

 Battersea Park, Regent's Park, and at Hampstead. 

 Thence it may be met with, wherever there is water and a 

 sufficiency of cover, in increasing numbers to the very 

 utmost limits of the Metropolitan area. I have often 

 flushed this species from ditches and cattle-ponds in the 

 corners of fields, and it not unfrequently visits shrubberies, 

 lawns, and private grounds at some considerable distance 

 from water. It frequents many spots along the Thames, 

 the Brent, the Lea, the Wandle, and the Beverley ; there 

 is scarcely a sewage-farm, a mill-pond, a reservoir, or 

 even a watercress-bed that is not at least visited occa- 

 sionally. At Wembley it frequents a small tributary of 

 the Brent, and I have often seen it there walking sedately 

 about the highway with almost as little concern as a 

 barn-door fowl. It is equally familiar at Pinner and 

 Uxbridge. In the more public localities the bird has 

 become so familiar with man that it can scarcely be 

 regarded as wild at all. 



The Water Hen is nothing nearly so shy and retiring in 

 its ways as the Corn Crake and seldom resents observa- 

 tion, unless threatened by actual harm. It may be 

 watched walking sedately about the grass-land in measured 

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