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Updated: September 13, 2025
What was my surprise a couple of hours later to see the same lot emerge from some rushes three-quarters of a mile up stream! They had circumvented a small waterfall, and the current is very strong in places. Part of the journey must have been done on dry land. At the same moment that I startled this brood out of the rushes a moorhen swam slowly out, accompanied by her mate.
"No, puppy, I have not gone below," and as he spoke the lad pressed the hilt of his dirk involuntarily and sharply downward. "Ha, ha!" laughed Rodd. "Why, that looks like wagging your tail like a moorhen. I say, why didn't you draw that skewer just now? My word, you did look fierce!"
The moorhens were fond of this pond because it was surrounded with a great quantity of rushes; they were numerous all up the brook. These birds, being tame and common, are not much regarded either for sport or the table, yet a moorhen shot at the right time of the year not till the frosts have begun is delicious eating.
Now and again a different sound would reach the hollow the dragging tail swish of the water-vole, or the fussy scramble of some belated moorhen. These he soon learned to distinguish from the stealthy, broken, hanging footfall of the beast of prey. When that was heard, both he and his companions would crouch together in the darkest corner of the burrow and hold their breath.
No doubt the cattle trod in the edge of the firm ground by degrees every year to get at the water, and thus widened the marsh. It was easy to understand now why all the water-fowl, teal and duck, moorhen and snipe, seemed in winter to make in this direction. The ducks especially exercised all our ingenuity and quite exhausted our patience in the effort to get near them in winter.
Now, from the recesses of the overhanging boughs on the tiny island opposite, a moorhen swims forth, cackling and pecking at the water as she goes. She is followed by five little balls of black fur her red-beaked progeny; they are fairly revelling in the evening sunlight, diving, playing with each other, and thoroughly enjoying life.
Mary, where I had joined the straggling procession, than, falling behind, the hunting fury died out of me and I was relieved to hear that no quarry had been found. The frightened moorhen stole back to her spotty eggs, the dipper returned to his dipping and curtseying to his own image in the stream, and I to my idle dreaming and watching.
Amongst these water-lilies a moorhen had built her nest, and presently she came clucking out right under Arthur's feet, followed by ten or a dozen little hurrying black balls, each tipped with sealing-wax red. She looked very happy with her brood as happy as the lilies and the blue sky and the sight made him savage. He took up a large stone that lay by him and threw it at her.
'That was clover, that warm whiff on the breeze, he remarked; 'and those are cows we hear cropping the grass behind us and blowing softly between mouthfuls. There is a sound of distant reapers, and yonder rises a blue line of cottage smoke against the woodland. The river runs somewhere close by, for I hear the call of a moorhen, and I see by your build that you're a freshwater mariner.
With the ducks come teal and widgeon and moorhen, till the swampy meadow resounds with their strange cries. When ponds and lakes are frozen hard is the best time for sport in these irrigated fields. All day long the ducks will stand or waddle to and fro on the ice in the centre of the lake or mere, far out of reach and ready to rise at the slightest alarm.
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