BRITISH BIRDS 317 



back is brown: belly and sides chesnut bay, and 

 the wing coverts of a fine pale sky-blue, terminated 

 with white tips, which form an oblique stripe across 

 the wing's, and an upper border to the beauty-spot, 

 or spangle, which is of a glossy changeable bronze, 

 or resplendent green, and also divides or crosses 

 the wings in the same direction : the greater quills 

 and the tail are dusky, but in the latter the outside 

 feathers, and the edges of some of the adjoining 

 ones, are white : a ring of Avhite also encircles the 

 rump and the vent, behind which the feathers under 

 the tail are black: legs and feet red. The female 

 is smaller than the male, from which she also 

 differs greatly in the colours of her plumage, the 

 coverts and spangle spot on her wings being less 

 brilliant, and the other parts composed of white, 

 grey, and rusty, crossed with curved dusky lines, 

 giving her much the appearance of the Common 

 Wild Duck. She makes her nest, lined with 

 withered grasses, on the ground, in the midst of 

 the largest tufts of rushes or coarse herbage, in the 

 most inaccessible part of the slaky marsh: she lays 

 ten or twelve pale rusty-coloured eggs; and as 

 soon as the young are hatched, they are conducted 

 to the water by the parent birds, who watch and 

 guard them with the greatest care. They are at 

 first very shapeless and ugly, for the bill is then 

 almost as broad as the body, and seems too great a 

 weight for the little bird to carry. Their plumage 

 does not acquire its full colours until after the 

 second moult. 



It would appear, from the varied descriptions of 

 ornithologists, that these birds differ much from 

 each other, both in the colour of the bill, and in the 



