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one of them it began to peck playfully at my hands and legs ; and when at length I rose to go 

 away, it walked after me, taking me, as I supposed, for one of its long-legged parents. I had 

 only just before been plucking from it some bits of down to keep ; for, valuable as I knew it to 

 be in a natural-history point of view, I could not make up my mind to take its life. As soon as 

 I saw its inclination to follow, I took to double-quick time, and left it far behind. Its confidence 

 was the more remarkable, as, all the time we were with it, the old Cranes were flying round near 

 the ground at some distance from us, their necks and feet fully stretched out as usual, but with 

 a remarkable sudden casting up of the wings in a direction over the back after each downward 

 stroke, in place of the ordinary steady movement ; at the same time they were making a peculiar 

 kind of low clattering or somewhat gurgling noise, of which it is very difficult to give an intelli- 

 gible description ; and now and then they broke out into a loud trumpeting call not unlike their 

 grand ordinary notes, which, audible at so great a distance, gladden the ears of the lover of 

 nature. As we went away I saw one of the Cranes alight where we had left the young. Later 

 in the day I had a longing wish to have another look at my young friends. I thought of the old 

 naturalists — who would have called them ' peepers ' I suppose — one of whom wrote of the Crane 

 in our fens, 'ejus pipiones scepissime vidi.' To see them now-a-days twice in a life, and that not 

 in England, would be a consolation. But it was not to be so ; we came back to the spot where 

 we had parted with them, rested for three or four hours round a stone that projected from the 

 marsh, but we saw and heard nothing more of either old or young Cranes. In a morass with 

 another name (which it took from a hill that overlooked it), 'Kharto tioma,' but which was only 

 separated from 'Iso noma' by an interval of a mile or two of birch thicket, there were also 

 Cranes ; and I found their nest with the egg-shells lying in the water by it, and so many quill- 

 feathers scattered about, that I almost feared some accident had happened to the sitting bird. 



"The following year, 1854, on the 20th of May, I went with Ludwig my servant lad, to 

 look for the Crane's nest in ' Iso noma.' We saw no birds ; and the spot where the nest had 

 been the preceding year was not easy to find in so extensive a marsh. So we quartered our 

 ground, working carefully up one strip of harder bog and down the next. After some hours of 

 heavy walking I saw the eggs — joyful sight ! — on an adjacent slip in a perfectly open place. The 

 two eggs lay with their long diameters parallel to one another, and there was just room for a 

 third egg to be placed between them. The nest, about two feet across, was nearly flat, made 

 chiefly of light-coloured grass or hay loosely matted together, scarcely more than two inches in 

 depth, and raised only two or three inches from the general level of the swamp. There were 

 higher sites close by ; and many of them would have seemed more eligible. 



" It was just at the lowest edge of the strip, but so much exposed, that I thought I should 

 be able to see even the eggs themselves from a spot at a considerable distance, to which I pro- 

 posed to go. There was a common story amongst the people of the country, that a Crane, if its 

 nest were disturbed, would carry off its eggs under its wing to another place ; so I purposely 

 handled one of the eggs, and hung up a bit of birch bark on a birch tree beyond the nest, as a 

 mark by which to direct my telescope. Then I went with Ludwig to a clump of spruce growing 

 on some dry sandy land which rose out of the midst of the marsh. Here I made a good 

 ambuscade of spruce boughs, crept into it, got Ludwig to cover me so that even the Crane's eye 

 could not distinguish me, and sent him to make a fire to sleep by on the far side of the wood, 



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