272 A DAY ON A NORFOLK MERE 



female wigeon here, which seemed to have taken 

 to the place in permanence ; but then, alas, the 

 hereditary instinct, transmitted through countless 

 generations, again broke out, and they were all off 

 to Norway or to Iceland, not, apparently, to return 

 until late in the ensuing autumn. So there will 

 be no wigeon's nest for us to-day. 



We go on, however, in good heart, and soon 

 light upon a second gadwall's nest with thirteen 

 eggs. Here, or hereabouts, it is that the keeper 

 fancies that he saw a teal slip off her nest the other 

 day. We search carefully, and, presently, off she 

 slips again, and flaps along the water, with one 

 wing hanging down, as if broken, hoping to lure us 

 away from the neighbourhood. But we are, all 

 of us, too old birds to be caught with that kind 

 of chaff. The nest contains eleven eggs of a light 

 olive grey colour, and, though the process of 

 incubation is far advanced, there is no trace of 

 down about them ; an exception to a rule other- 

 wise universal, I believe, in the duck tribe, which 

 I have never observed before. Not far off, in a 

 tuft of rushes, we come across a small flat nest 

 about the size of a soup-plate, all ready for eggs, 

 which I take to be an exceptionally small moorhen's, 

 but the keeper pronounces to be none other than 



