CHAPTER LVIII 

 THE HARRIERS 



THE MARSH-HARRIER 



STRANGE active birds of the fenland, half-hawk and half- 

 owl, they come and go, and at every occultation cause 

 sorrow to the gunner's heart, for there is a price upon their 

 heads, and I don't know that their extinction will harm 

 any one. 



On May-day, when the sallows are covered with leaves, 

 and fresh green islets of covert rise from the grassy seas, an 

 unmated male marsh-harrier with cream-coloured head may 

 appear, and be seen beating to leeward over the soft marshes, 

 rich with soft rushes, sedge, and scattered reed ; for they love 

 the water, and perhaps the rail's and waterhen's eggs and 

 young they find thereabouts ; for such a marsh as the marsh- 

 harrier loves, the rail and moorhen love. 



Directly the light breaks in the northern sky, you ma} r 

 see this lean bandit, all bone and feathers, with his slow, 

 heron-like flight, beating over the green reed grounds and 

 shimmering beds of floating gladen on the hunt for the 

 spotted eggs of rail, waterhen, coot, or young snipe, which 

 he dearly loves. As you watch him in the growing light, 

 perhaps you may see him fly down into a gladen bed and 

 disappear ; and in the cool fresh morning you will hear the 

 heart-rending cries of the mother waterhen, as he sits on 

 her nest and deliberately makes his breakfast of fresh eggs 

 or dainty young black water-chicks. Presently he rises 



lazily; and as he flies up over the stuff and goes on his 



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