308 
THE WATER-HEN. 
the water ; and artlessly formed as it is of a few rushes, one 
might suppose that it would he easily discovered, which would 
he the case, but for the caution adopted by the bird, who, 
before she quits her eggs, covers them carefully up, for the 
joint purpose of concealment and warmth. A person fishing 
on the banks of the Thames, when passing a willow-bed, 
heard a slight rustling motion : suspecting it to proceed from 
some water-bird, he kneeled down and remained perfectly 
quiet, when the noise ceased. On rising and looking about, 
he saw a Water-Hen busily employed in collecting dry rushes 
and flags, and laying them one by one over her eggs deposited 
in one of these hare nests close beside her. It was not long 
before she had completely hidden them ; and then, looking 
round with a cautious glance, not aware that her motions 
were observed, softly and silently glided away amongst the 
reeds and disappeared. On a nearer approach, strange to 
say, the nest was with difficulty found, and no one who had 
not previously ascertained its existence was thereabouts, could 
possibly have discovered it. 
We have said that they usually build either upon a level 
with, or very little raised above the water, but not invariably 
so, — for although almost entirely confined to the water, as 
their abiding as well as feeding-place, they will not only 
perch on trees when roosting, but even build their nests at a 
considerable elevation above the ground. An instance of this 
occurred in Surrey, where the attention of a person who had 
landed upon an island in the middle of a large pond, was 
drawn to a mass of dry rushes, flags, and reeds, strangely 
heaped together, about twenty feet above the ground, in a 
spruce fir-tree. Curiosity induced him to climb up, — when, 
to his surprise, out crept a Water-Hen, which dropped into 
the pond and made off towards the shore. 
But it is not only in their instinctive attachments and 
habits that they merit notice ; the following anecdote proves , 
that they are gifted with a sense of observation approaching 
to something very like reasoning faculties. At a gentleman’s 
nouse, in Staffordshire, the Pheasants are fed out of one of 
those boxes described in page 287, the lid of which rises with 
