Correspondence.



197



live with the Water Rails. When waiting for a rise of fly the fisherman

may have to nurse his patience for an hour or even more, and then, if a

naturalist, he sits very still and sees many things. I am very fond of the

Water Rail, admiring its daintiness, its distinctiveness, and its address in the

presence of danger. Its elusive habits have led me to spend much time

over it.


Not even the Grasshopper Warbler is more secretive than the Water

Rail. One will not find the bird if one “ goes after it,” if one looks for it as

one may look for a Duck, a Coot ora Moorhen. We shall never see it at all

if it has the slightest suspicion that we are anywhere about. But if you put on

your best protective resemblance clothes, have no white linen showing, sit

down in the likeliest place and remain perfectly still, then you have a

chance. Should you be fortunate you will before long notice here and there

a bit of grass or reed close to the water moving a little, and then may catch

momentary glimpses of a small object threading about through the runs in

the herbage. If you did not know the Rail and its ways you might easily

take this for a water rat. As the day wears 011 the Rails begin to cry or

call, and you will seldom have heard in the stillness of a summer evening a

more startling sound. The voice of the Water Rail is amazing in volume

and variety, out of any proportion to the size of the bird. It is quite

impossible to attempt to phrase it syllabically. There are squeals, sometimes

with a shiver in them, there are gurgles and there are grunts. I have never

been able to see the bird clearly enough when calling, but one of the sounds

suggests a greatly dilated throat. In the winter it is far more silent.


When the water is falling in a “carrier” [irrigation channel] and it is

about half full, one sometimes sees a Water Rail, under the shelter of the

overhanging banks, coming daintily along on the wet mud, flirting its tail

and rapidly picking up small things, such as water snails. Occasionally

you surprise one sitting on a fence rail over the water, or on the low bough

of a willow. They distract the j’oung dogs a good deal when they are

looking for dead or wounded Snipe, twisting about all round them in the

most mystifying way. One Monday in December of last year when we

were shooting Snipe, a dog put up a Water Rail under my feet out of a

very thin fringe of low reeds by a side stream of the river. The bird

dropped into the water when half way across and swam to the opposite

bank. It swam very easily and prettily, jerking itself like a Red-necked

Phalarope.


I have never yet seen a Water Rail feeding away from the water, or for

that matter feeding in the open at all. With us it is, for instance, far more

of a water bird than the Snipe and, as far as I know, feeds only in the

shallow water and on the wet mud by the water’s edge.


In the next valley the railway runs for several miles along the edge of

the water-meadows, sometimes close to the river. I have not seldom, from

the carriage window, seen .Snipe feeding by the carriers, but never a Water

Rail.



