THE SNIPE AND COOT 269 



Another clump, a little further on, produces another 

 nest of the same species, and a third, a third ; each 

 with the same number of eggs. Careless, by this 

 time, about wetting our feet and legs, we move 

 down close to the border of the water, and from 

 a rushy tussock, in a peninsula of sedge, a bald- 

 headed coot drops, with a loud flop, into the water 

 from her huge nest, which she has piled higher 

 and higher, as the water rose with the recent rains, 

 till it is at least a couple of feet above low-water 

 mark. It contains nine eggs, about half as big 

 again as a moorhen's, with a light brown ground, 

 mottled with black. A few minutes later, and a 

 duck, which I had never seen upon the wing before, 

 starts up from beneath my feet. It is a gad wall or 

 dun-bird, and she leaves behind her eleven pinkish 

 eggs, whose strong odour, together with the abun- 

 dance of soft down with which they are encircled, 

 proclaims that each one of them contains a duckling 

 which is already very much alive, and which, if you 

 were to break the shell, would be soon ready to take 

 to the water and become food, as so many of them do, 

 for the pike, the water-rat, or the fox. It is a nest 

 that I have never seen before, and I feel that, even 

 if I find no other rare nest to-day, my journey of a 

 hundred miles will not have been in vain. 



