THE RED-LEG 299 



may find the nest indistinguishable from a snipe's, merely 

 a cup-shaped depression cunningly placed in a tussock of 

 grass often beside the nest of the peewit and snipe; for 

 they nest in colonies, the peewit choosing the driest ground, 

 the red-legs and snipes the dry islets in a soft marsh. 

 When the four eggs are laid, they draw the grass together 

 over themselves to hide their prizes. 



There, amid the feathery cotton-grasses, ragged-robin, 

 and fresh grassy islets, these birds sit out their incubating 

 period. The young couples are very shy, and should an 

 enemy approach, the cock-bird, hovering overhead in the 

 blue, calls quickly, and the hen-bird rises swiftly straight 

 off her nest, flying away piping hurriedly, and making 

 a quaint noise with her powerful pinions, and there in 

 the grassy cup are the four eggs, with their light shells 

 and blood-red spots, lying with their big ends upper- 

 most. The older pairs, however, are not so shy. Once 

 when watching these wild marsh birds I flushed an old 

 bird from her nest, and immediately dropped flat in the 

 moist marsh stuff. She soon returned from the blue. A 

 fenman, too, once drew up and captured a breeding bird with 

 his hat. She sat in his cap, and would not fly away till he 

 coughed, when she darted off across the marshes ; but she, 

 too, returned in a short ten minutes, and finally hatched her 

 four eggs. Dogs often catch them on their nests. And, 

 indeed, at times you may stand over them and watch them 

 sitting as closely as a hen-pheasant, the grass braided over 

 them like a shawl. But not always is the moist marsh 

 chosen. The rond is a favourite nesting-place, as it is 

 with the peewit. There, overlooking some sub-aqueous 

 garden, brindled with shadows of the reed, amongst which 

 the perch swim in and out, discerning perhaps the shadowy 

 reeds, and gloat as they hang their glassy necklaces of 

 spawn upon the water-plants, the red-legs sit for a sleepy 

 fortnight warming the yellow yolks into the quaint little 

 bodies that soon will fill the stuff with their baby cries, 



