LAND-RAIL 
^7 
sun, and eyes still sparkling with the wine of the 
free air after pent weeks in Collingwood, have been 
ferreting and shooting — everything is game to them, 
and a poor Land-rail lies crushed among the limp 
rabbits on the rack. A kind of duck, they say. 
And then swift thought runs to a quiet valley on 
the south coast, where a little knot of ironbarks 
broods over the still waters of Airey's Creek (was there 
ever such a bit of swimming-water ?), and behind 
them the moist flat is covered with clumps of stringy 
yellowish grass, not tussock and not sword-grass, 
but something between. In the centre of one high- 
growing tuft a Land-rail has flattened down the 
stems and laid her pretty clutch of creamy eggs, 
spotted with brown and purple and grey. Then 
back yet a few years and as a boy of eleven I am 
peering with the delight that only a bird-loving boy 
can know into just such another nest, this time 
deep among stalks of barley on the slope of Leopold 
Hill. 
One might come nearer home and still find the 
Land-rail. They nested for years in long grass near 
the now dry pond in the Eastern Park. One cat was, 
I know, responsible for at least three of these birds. 
Probably their last remaining stronghold close to the 
town is the samphire scrub which the Salt Works so 
steadily reduces in area. When that is gone we shall 
see no more Land-rails, except it be a stray bird or 
two along the banks of the two rivers above the 
junction. 
