76 
This bird has vary small feet, but the claws, all four of which 
are in front, are very powerful, thus enabling it to go to 
sleep clinging to a comparatively smooth face of rock that would 
baffle any other bird. When the business of incubation is com- 
menced the birds are not seen so much through the day. While the 
female is sitting on the eggs, the male travels considerable distances 
and usually spends the day feeding over some large sheet of water, 
but with the approach of dusk (and also in the early morning) they 
return home and are to be seen darting about in twos and threes at 
lightning speed. Just before darkness sets in they are joined fora 
short while by their sitting mates who unite in the mad race over the 
house-tops or high up in the clouds, according to where flies and 
insects are to be found, the whole flock screaming and screeching 
like a band of schoolboys let loose. 
The male bird feeds his sitting partner whilst on the nest. 
The swift lays one, or in some cases two pure white eggs, very 
much elongated, in the rudest of nests, merely a small heap of short 
straws, feathers and mud or dirt caked together, placed far back 
under some old roof, the bird entering and leaving through a very 
small hole under the slates. The young birds in their first plumage 
are of a greyish-black, each feather being edged with white. 
Water-rail (Page 44). — The water-rail is so very much like the 
corn-crake in habit and shape that in many cases it escapes 
identification. The adult bird, however, has a red beak and is slate- 
and -chocolate -coloured , as compared with the light sandy-brown 
colour of the corn-crake. It is resident and well distributed 
throughout the country, although nowhere common, except perhaps 
in some parts of Ireland. It is an extremely shy bird, skulking away 
under cover of the sedges and rushes when disturbed, and is very 
seldom seen, except possibly' in the nesting-season whilst its nest is 
being searched for. It is then sometimes set up unexpectedly, 
whereupon it flies over the nearest hedge and alights in the next 
field, trusting more to its feet than its wings to escape with. This 
bird haunts low-lying, swampy ground, overgrown with rank 
sedges and coarse grass, and although it has not web feet it 
is every bit as much at home in the water as on dry land. 
Its nest is usually well concealed in a large tuft of coarse grass, 
standing sufficiently high above the swamp-water to keep the 
eggs dry. Six to ten eggs, of a pale stone-colour, sparingly spotted 
with small dull-red markings, are laid on the solidly-built nest 
of coarse grasses. A peculiar feature of the water-rail’s eggs is that 
they are very often pointed at both ends. A favourite site for these 
nests is in a field of about one acre in extent, having a low marshy 
corner well overgrown with reeds and coarse grass. It is usually an 
impossibility to take one of them without getting wet up to the 
middle. At times we hear of a remarkable early nest of the corn- 
crake being found, even before the bird is heard craking. These 
early nests are not corn crakes’ a^all' I)Ul those of the water- 
rail, which, being resident, nests, 'QfSlfc i^/Bicji)th earlier than the 
migratory corn-crake. /' 'fc' ' 
