254 



BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



and sleep in holes in the river-walls ; but they are never 

 safe anywhere, for the hungry crows, and buzzards, and 

 hawks, and stoats find them out, and "trim them out 

 properly," as the gunners say. Yet they are most friendly 

 to men if undisturbed, and I know a painter who used 

 to feed a water-rail regularly every morning with bread- 

 crumbs, the confiding bird coming from the stuff on to 

 the rond to feed amongst the robins, whom the bird after- 

 wards chased away. 



And he is good to eat himself in a dumpling, or curried, 

 he is a splendid fellow ; and it is a matter for regret that the 

 hard winter of 1890-91 was the cause of frightful mortality 

 amongst those birds the vermin " cleared them up," and 

 in the spring after that Arctic winter a rail's nest was as 

 rare as a spotted-rail's had hitherto been. Never was such 

 scarcity of rails known in any of their favourite haunts. I 

 believe the water-rail will one day be as rare in the Broads 

 district as is the spotted-rail to-day. 



WATER-RAIL'S NEST AND YOUNG (in situ). 



