PHEASANTS NEST IN TREE 279 



distract our attention from their brood, as they 

 scuttled along in hot haste, and with their loud 

 baby-chirping, over the surface of the water. We 

 came across other moorhen's and coot's nests, of 

 which we now took little account ; and a third 

 gadwall's nest put a good finish to our search ; for 

 four o'clock had come, and it was full time to lunch, 

 and then move towards Harrow. 



The sedge warbler and the reed warbler, the 

 woodpecker and the nightingale, the cuckoo and 

 the cuckoo's mate again made their presence felt, 

 as we lunched on the banks of the stream, whence 

 we had taken our first survey in the morning. 

 And now the keeper has one more, and that not 

 the least object of interest, to show us before we 

 leave. It is a thing which not even he, with all 

 his life-long experience, has ever seen before, a 

 pheasant's nest in a tree! His son had climbed, 

 the other day, a slender thorn bush, grown round 

 with ivy, to what he thought was a wood-pigeon's 

 nest, and there, at the height of eleven feet from 

 the ground, all told, he had found a pheasant sitting ! 

 What freak of nature can have induced a bird, 

 which, except during the hours of sleep, is so essen- 

 tially terrestrial, to aspire to such an eminence ? 

 The ground below was marshy, but it was just such 



