YOUNG DUCKS CATCHING MOTHS 



CHAPTER XXXV 



Tameness of Eirds when Sitting 



July 1st. — In walking over a field, the grass of which had been 

 cut the day before, but was not yet carried, I disturbed a land- 

 rail, who was still sitting on her eggs, notwithstanding the great 

 change that must have come over her abode, which, from being 

 covered with a most luxuriant crop of rye-grass and clover, was 

 now perfectly bare. How the eggs had escaped being broken, 

 either by the scythe or by the tramping of the mowers' feet, it 

 is difficult to understand ; but there was the poor bird sitting 

 closely on her eggs, as if nothing had happened, and on my 

 near approach she moved quietly away, looking more like a 

 weasel than a bird as she ran crouching with her head nearly 

 touching the ground. 



In another part of the same field I passed a nest of landrails 

 in which the young ones were on the point of, or rather, in the 



