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Updated: September 13, 2025
As they came up to the lake, Dick ran on first and dashed into the reeds at the side, splashing and paddling about, and here and there taking to swimming. Just as he entered one great tuft of green reeds, rushes, and withes, there was an extra amount of splashing, and away flew, or rather ran along the surface of the water, a moorhen, with her thin attenuated toes just paddling the surface.
De Putron informed him that Coots, Waterhens, and Little Grebes bred that year in the Braye Pond; and Mr. De Putron, to whom I wrote on the subject, said the information I had received was perfectly correct. I see no reason to doubt the fact of the Moorhen occasionally breeding in Mr. De Putron's pond, and perhaps in other places in the Island, especially the Grand Mare.
The nightingales sang, the thrushes flew out before them, the wild duck and moorhen glanced on the pools.
Then he let his hand fall into the strings and they fell a-tinkling sweetly, like unto the song of the winter robin, and at last he lifted his voice and sang: Still now is the stithy this morning unclouded, Nought stirs in the thorp save the yellow-haired maid A-peeling the withy last Candlemas shrouded From the mere where the moorhen now swims unafraid.
The cows swish their tails beneath them on hot afternoons; they paint rivers so green that when a moorhen dives one expects to see its feathers all green when it comes up again. I like to think of the fish balanced against the stream like flags blown out; and of water-beetles slowly raising domes of mud upon the bed of the river.
A moorhen splattered out from the willow-roots, and Brighteye crouched motionless, till he recognised that the noise made by the clumsy bird was almost as familiar to him as the rustle of the reeds in a breeze. The blue heron rose heavily from the backwater, and winged his slow flight high above the trees.
Not that the company advertised itself, mark you. Being wild company, it would not; but they knew it was there. The chain-trail of the moorhen reduplicated itself. It was joined by that of a water-rail they saw his ruby eyes and rat-like form in passing.
The moorhen called again from the reeds near the ford, then flew away over the fire-flushed river and disappeared into the gloom; and a water-vole dropped with a gentle plash into the pool. Casting a white moth quietly over the stream, I noticed beyond the shadows a round mass rising from the centre of the current, moving against the flood, and sinking noiselessly out of sight.
Time after time we have been startled by a flight of duck rising abruptly from the stream, in places where by day one would never dream of looking for them. Foxes, too, may be seen within a stone's throw of the house on a moonlight evening. They love to prowl around on the chance of a dainty morsel, such as a fat duck or a semi-domestic moorhen. Nor will they take any notice of you at such a time.
Whereas before they had been alone, almost, in a frozen world, scarcely crossing a trail but the quadruple track of water-voles or the chain-pattern impression of a moorhen nor had seen a living thing but the square-ended, squat, little, black form of a water-vole out upon an alder-branch, gnawing bark they now began to be aware of gradually increasing company.
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