THE COMMON WATERMEN. 
m 
labourers were daily at work^ tliougli places of the most retired 
character were quite contiguous. Two pair having nests there 
in the summer of 1831 had them destroyed by the sudden filling 
of the pond in which they were placed^ after it had been for a 
long time dry. The calamity seemed to provoke their wrath^ as 
a very obstinate engagement ensued. They fought while standing 
in the water, and struck each other with their feet, crowing 
loudly in defiance all the time.'^ After the destruction of these two 
nests, three were made, one on the top of a very large stone in the 
pond ; another at the base of the stem of a willow, which grew 
horizontally over the wafer before shooting upwards ; the third on 
the ground within a foot of the water’s edge. On the 10th of 
September that year there was an incursion of waterhens to the 
pond, when the old pair, together with their young, which had 
been brought out there, took possession of an island, and, like 
sentinels, kept moving along its borders. Whenever any of the 
new comers attempted a landing they were completely beaten back 
— it was an amusing scene from the whole being conducted with 
soldier-like regularity. 
When this pond was filled in May 1832, after having been for 
some time dry, there were also two nests of the waterhen, one of 
which was on the stem of an overhanging willow. When the water 
approached it, one of the pair kept running quickly to the nest with 
small sticks in its bill, while the other remained there, to fix them 
beneath, so that before the water reached the eggs the nest was 
raised about six inches : this unfortunately proved to be labour 
in vain, as the eggs were destroyed.f The same pair afterwards 
* Mr. R. J. Montgomery, writing to me on the 9tli of March, 1849, remarked — • 
‘‘Waterhens when pairing, fight violently for the females. They stand nearly 
upright in the water and strike with the feet. I watched a pair the other morning 
for half an hour, while they struck each other until one got the better of his anta- 
gonist. He then seized him hy the head with his beak, and would I think have 
killed him had I not thought proper to interfere. The female aU the time looked on 
quietly.” 
t Mr. Selby, in an interesting communication to the Berwickshire Naturalists’ 
Club, mentions a pair of waterhens not only adding to their nest under similar cir- 
cumstances hut removing the eggs until the nest had reached its height, when they 
were safely replaced. A remarkable instance of the intelligence of this species is 
given in Stanley’s ‘ Familiar History of Birds,’ vol. ii. p. 127, 3rd edit. 
