54 



My Pond. 



greeny shelters, under the sweeping branches of bullace, 

 blackthorn, or willow. 



The young are very pretty little balls of soft black 

 down, with a wedge of greeny yellow for a beak. If you 

 look closely at them as they move along the margin, 

 their feet go twinkle, twinkle as they run, with a kind 

 of darting movement, extremely pretty and interesting. 

 They are active from the moment they leave the egg, 

 and if frightened when the parents are absent, will 

 take to the water and swim even on the second day, 

 should the nest be near to the surface ; but the moor- 

 hen sometimes builds high, or, as we shall see, occa- 

 sionally raises her nest higher after she has built it, 

 and then the mother carries the little things down to 

 the water to give them their first outing, and will care- 

 fully carry them back again to the nest. 



Those who have witnessed it declare it to be one 



of the prettiest sights 

 to see the young ones 

 lifted by the parents 

 from the nest to the 

 water. The coots 

 practise the same art, 

 though the young of 

 the coots can hardly 

 be said to be so pretty 

 and original looking 

 as these little balls 

 of black fluffy down. 

 They are good and careful parents, if sometimes 

 they seem to be rather domineering in manner. But 

 this may be, in some degree, due to the fact that they 

 have so many enemies that not a few of the young 

 never reach maturity. Herons (which occasionally 



COOT. 



