CHAP, xxxv.] BIRDS WHEN SITTING. 273 



CHAPTER XXXV. 



Tameness of Birds when Sitting. 



July 1st. IN walking over a field, the grass of which had been 

 cut the day before, but was not yet carried, I disturbed a land- 

 rail, who was still sitting on her eggs, notwithstanding the great 

 change that must have come over her abode, which, from being 

 covered with a most luxuriant crop of rye-grass and clover, was 

 now perfectly bare. How the eggs had escaped being broken, 

 either by the scythe or by the tramping of the mower's feet, it 

 is difficult to understand ; but there was the poor bird sitting 

 closely on her eggs, as if nothing had happened, and on my near 

 approach she moved quietly away, looking more like a weasel 

 than a bird as she ran crouching with her head nearly touching 

 the ground. 



In another part of the same field I passed a nest of landrails 

 in which the young ones were on the point of, or rather, in the 

 very act of being hatched, some of the young having just quitted 

 the shell, while others were only half out of their fragile prison. 

 Both old birds were running around the nest while I stooped to 

 look at their little black progeny, and were uttering a low kind 

 of hissing noise, quite unlike their usual harsh croak. The 

 mowers told me that they had seen several nests in the same 

 field, but had avoided breaking the eggs whenever they perceived 

 them in time. Though innumerable landrails arrive here during 

 the first week in May, always coming regularly to their time, the 

 period and manner of their departure are quite a mystery to me. 

 Although in general their young are not hatched till the first and 

 second week in July, they seem to have entirely vanished by 

 the time that the corn is cut : it is very rare indeed to find one 

 when you are beating the fields in September. 



The partridges here are chiefly hatched about the last week in 

 June. Like the landrail, the hen bird sits very close, and during 

 that time will almost allow herself to be taken up in the hand, 



T 



