Next to the ringdove in importance—and a bird of a more fascinating personality, if such a word be admissible—is the moorhen, pretty and quaint in its silky olive-brown and slaty-grey dress, with oblique white bar on its side, and white undertail, yellow and scarlet beak and frontal shield, and large green legs. Green-legged little hen is its scientific name. Its motions, too, are pretty and quaint. Not without a smile can we see it going about on the smooth turf with an air of dignity incongruous in so small a bird, lifting up and setting down its feet with all the deliberation of a crane or bustard. A hundred curious facts have been recorded of this familiar species—the ‘moat-hen’ of old troubled days when the fighting man, instead of the schoolmaster as now, was abroad in England, and manor-houses were surrounded by moats, in which the moorhen lived, close to human beings, in a semi-domestic state. But after all that has been written, we no sooner have him near us, under our eyes, as in London to-day, than we note some new trait or pretty trick. Thus, in a pond in West London I saw a moorhen act in a manner which, so far as I know, had never been described; and I must confess that if some friend had related such a thing to me I should have been disposed to think that his sight had deceived him. This moorhen was quietly feeding on the margin, but became greatly excited on the appearance, a little distance away, of a second bird. Lowering its head, it made a little rush at, or towards, the new-comer, then stopped and went quietly back; then made a second little charge, and again walked back. Finally it began to walk backwards, with slow, measured steps, towards the other bird, displaying, as it advanced, or retrograded, its open white tail, at the same time glancing over its shoulder as if to observe the effect on its neighbour of this new mode of motion. Whether this demonstration meant anger, or love, or mere fun, I cannot say.
Instances of what Ruskin has called the moorhen’s ‘human domesticity of temper, with curious fineness of sagacity and sympathies in taste,’ have been given by Bishop Stanley in his book on birds. He relates that the young, when able to fly, sometimes assist in rearing the later broods, and even help the old birds to make new nests. Of the bird’s æsthetic taste he has the following anecdote. A pair of very tame moorhens that lived in the grounds of a clergyman, in Cheadle, Staffordshire, in constantly adding to the materials of their nest and decorating it, made real havoc in the garden; the hen was once seen sitting on her eggs ‘surrounded with a brilliant wreath of scarlet anemones.’ An instance equally remarkable occurred in 1896 in Battersea Park. A pair of moorhens took it into their fantastic little heads to build their nest against a piece of wire-netting stretched across the lake at one point. It was an enormous structure, built up from the water to the top of the netting, nearly three feet high, and presented a strange appearance from the shore. On a close view the superintendent found that four tail-feathers of the peacock had been woven into its fabric, and so arranged that the four broad tips stood free above the nest, shading the cavity and sitting bird, like four great gorgeously coloured leaves.
The moorhen, like the ringdove, was almost unknown in London twenty years ago, and is now as widely diffused, but owing to its structure and habits it cannot keep pace with the other bird’s increase. It must have water, and some rushes, or weeds, or bushes to make its nest in; and wherever these are found, however small the pond may be, there the moorhen will live very contentedly.
A very few years ago it would have been a wild thing to say that the little grebe was a suitable bird for London, and if some wise ornithologist had prophesied its advent how we should all have laughed at him! For how should this timid feeble-winged wanderer be able to come and go, finding its way to and from its chosen park, in this large province covered with houses, by night, through the network of treacherous telegraph wires, in a lurid atmosphere, frightened by strange noises and confused by the glare of innumerable lamps? Of birds that get their living from the water, it would have seemed safer to look for the coming (as colonists) of the common sandpiper, kingfisher, coot, widgeon, teal: all these, also the heron and cormorant, are occasional visitors to inner London, and it is to be hoped that some of them will in time become permanent additions to the wild bird life of the metropolis.
The little grebe, before it formed a settlement, was also an occasional visitor during its spring and autumn travels; and in 1870, when there was a visitation on a large scale, as many as one hundred little grebes were seen at one time on the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. But it was not until long afterwards, about fifteen years ago, that the first pair had the boldness to stay and breed in one of the park lakes, in sight of many people coming and going every day and all day long. This was at St. James’s Park, and from this centre the bird has extended his range from year to year to other parks and spaces, and is now as well established as the ringdove and moorhen. But, unlike the others, he is a summer visitor, coming in March and April, and going, no man knows whither, in October and November. If he were to remain, a long severe frost might prove fatal to the whole colony. He lives on little fishes and water insects, and must have open water to fish in.
He is not a showy bird, nor large, being less than the teal in size, and indeed is known to comparatively few persons. Nevertheless he is a welcome addition to our wild bird life, and is, to those who know him, a wonderfully interesting little creature, clothed in a dense unwettable plumage, olive, black, and chestnut in colour, his legs set far back—‘becoming almost a fish’s tail indeed, rather than a bird’s legs,’ the lobed feet in shape like a horse-chestnut leaf. His habits are as curious as his structure. His nest is a raft made of a mass of water-weeds, moored to the rushes or to a drooping branch, and sometimes it breaks from its moorings and floats away, carrying eggs and sitting bird on it. On quitting the nest the bird invariably draws a coverlet of wet weeds over the eggs; the nest in appearance is then nothing but a bunch of dead vegetable rubbish floating in the water. When the young are out of the eggs, the parent birds are accustomed to take them under their wings, just as a man might take a parcel under his arm, and dive into the water.
DABCHICK ON NEST