CHAP. XXXV.] BIRDS WHEN SITTING. 278 
CHAPTER XXXV. 
Tameness of Birds when Sitting. 
July \st.—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-grasy and clover, was 
now perfectly bare. How the eggs had escaped being broken, 
either by the scythe or by the tramping of the mower’s 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 
very act of being hatched, some of the young having just quitted 
the shell, while others were only half out of their fragile prison. 
Both old birds were running around the nest while I stooped to 
look at their little black progeny, and were uttering a low kind 
of hissing noise, quite unlike their usual harsh croak. The 
mowers told me that they had seen several nests in the same 
field, but had avoided breaking the eggs whenever they perceived 
them in time. Though innumerable landrailsarrive here during 
the first week in May, always coming regularly to their time, the 
period and manner of their departure are quite a mystery to me. 
Although in geueral their young are not hatched till the first and 
second week in July, they seem to have entirely vanished by 
the time that the corn is cut: it is very rare indeed to find one 
when you are beating the fields in September. 
The partridges here are chiefly hatched about the last week in 
June. Like the landrail, the hen bird sits very close, and during 
that time will almost allow herself to be taken up in the hand, 
T 
