May 



suitable enough, but being subject to periodical 

 inroads by " trippers," was most probably abandoned 

 on this account. It is the male who exercises 

 authority in such matters, and one can well believe 

 that it must have cost the hen a pang to defer to 

 him and forsake her first-born at the moment of 

 birth. Bird life is full of such tragedies, and one 

 can only console oneself with the thought that 

 birds have short memories, and that when once 

 sufficiently scared to cause them definitely to abandon 

 a spot, out of sight is out of mind, and they soon 

 select a site for a new home. 



On the same day I came upon the moorhen's 

 nest shown in the illustration. It was built in a 

 tuft of reeds upon a marshy piece of ground in a 

 small clearing in a wood traversed by a stream. 

 Thousands of dead oak leaves had been gathered 

 from beneath a tree hard by, and placed in circular 

 layers one upon another to form a column a foot 

 high. The reeds forming the tuft, in the centre 

 of which the nest had been built, afforded a little 

 cover at the sides, but it was evident that the bird 

 had trusted for privacy to the general inaccessi- 

 bility of the spot rather than made any effort at 

 concealment. 



Owing to absence, I was unable to follow the 

 fortunes of this brood, but revisited the spot on the 

 27th of June, when, by working quietly through 

 the wood and making a sudden rush at the last, I 

 just arrived to see one of the little black chicks 



