144 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. [cuap. xvurt. 
after year to the same pool for the purpose of breeding. Like 
the wild duck, they sometimes hatch their young a considerable 
distance from the water, and lead the young brood immediately 
to it. I once, when riding in Ross-shire, saw an old teal with 
eight newly-hatched young once cross the road. The youngsters 
could not climb up the opposite bank, and young and old all 
squatted flat down to allow me to pass. I got off my horse and 
lifted all the little birds up and carried them a little distance 
down the road to a ditch, for which I concluded they were 
making, the old bird all the time fluttering about me and fre- 
quently coming within reach of my riding-whip. The part of 
the:road where I first found them passed through thick fir- 
wood with rank heather, and it was quite a puzzle to me how 
such small animals, scarcely bigger than a half-grown mouse, 
could have got along through it. The next day I saw them all 
enjoying themselves in a small pond at some little distance off, 
where a brood of teal appeared every year. In some of the 
mountain lakes the teal breed in great numbers. When shoot- 
ing in August I have seen a perfect cloud of these birds occa- 
sionally rise from some grassy loch. The widgeon never breeds 
with us, but leaves this country at the end of April. 
We have great numbers of landrails here in their breeding- 
season. I have for several years first heard them on the lst of 
May. Hoarse and discordant as their voice is, I always hear it 
with pleasure, for it brings the idea of summer and fine weather 
with it. Oftentimes have I opened my window during the fine 
dewy nights of June to listen to these birds as they utter their 
harsh cry in every direction, some close to the very window, 
and answered by others at different distances. I like too to see 
this bird, as at the earliest dawn she crosses a road followed by 
her train of quaint-looking, long-legged young ones, all walking 
in the same stooping position; or to see them earlier in the year 
lift up their snake-like heads above the young corn, and croak in 
defiance of some other bird of the same kind, whose head appears 
now and then at ashort distance. At other times, one hears the 
landrail’s cry apparently almost under one’s feet in the thick 
clover, and he seems to shake the very ground, making as much 
noise as a bull. How strange it is that a bird with apparently so 
soft and tender a throat can utter so hard and loud a cry, which 
