Indeed, whatever the moorhens are doing, they are interesting, and there is an alert sprightliness about them when in company that is infinitely amusing. When an old bird is alone (it is impossible to tell cock from hen) it is very self-respecting and purposeful. As it goes upon the grass there is a high-stepping, aristocratic gait about its walk that even the affected little flirt of the tail accentuates, and when he is in the water, with some object-point in view, he swims both fast and straight. And what beautiful homes they find, where the yellow iris grows, and the marsh-marigold, and tangles of forget-me-not, where the stream filters in the shallows through beds of cress, or deepens into pools, so that the water-lily may spread its pads at ease. And there are beds of bulrush and feathery-headed reeds, into which they paddle; and if you do not mind wet feet, you can go and look right along the little "pleached" alleys they have made for themselves, to the end where the nest, a heap of rushes with a comfortable hollow smooth-lined with finer material, closes the passage. No bird nests more becomingly than the moorhen, or more picturesquely; and if it were not that I remembered the enjoyment I used to find in wading after them, and (with some shame be it said) the excellence of the eggs when hard-boiled cold, I should look back with more repentance than I do to the wholesale manner in which I used to fill my handkerchief full of the large speckled eggs, and triumphantly distribute them along the table at tea-time. Alas! for Clare's supposition that
"At distance from the water's edge Or hanging sallow's farthest stretch The moorhen builds her nest of sedge Safe from destroying schoolboy's reach."
While I robbed her--a moorhen by judicious robbery can be made to go on laying twenty eggs and upwards--the mother would get into the water under the shadow of the reeds, and with only her head out, watch the spoliation in progress. And sometimes, coming upon her asleep, perhaps, on her nest after her young ones had hatched, it was a sight to see how suddenly she vanished, and how the chicks scrambling out after her in a twinkling, stood on their heads, thinking they too had dived out of sight. I have often taken up the little fluff-balls in my hand, and wished to take them home, but kinder thoughts have supervened, and I have laid them back on the water and watched them paddle off to the shelter where the poor mother, only her red-spot beak showing above water, crouched, clucking nervously in stage whispers, "This way, this way."