Love’s Meinie： Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds
Lecture 3. The Dabchicks: 2.a. Allegretta Nymphaea, Maculata. Spotted Allegret
John Ruskin
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_ LECTURE III. THE DABCHICKS: II.A. ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA, MACULATA. SPOTTED ALLEGRET
96. Water-Crake or 'Skitty' of Bewick,--French, 'Poule d'eau Marouette,' (we may perhaps take Marouette as euphonious for Maculata, but I wish I knew what it meant);--though so light of foot, flies heavily; and, when compelled to take wing, merely passes over the tops of the reeds to some place of security a short distance off. (Gould.) The body is "in all these Rails _compressed_" (Yarrell,--he means laterally thin), which enables them to make their way through dense herbage with facility. I can't find anything clear about its country, except that it 'occasionally visits' Sweden in summer, and Smyrna in winter, and that it has been found in Corfu, Sicily, Crete,--Whittlesea Mere,--and Yarley Fen;--in marshes always, wherever it is; (nothing said of its behavior on ice,) and not generally found farther north than Cumberland. Its food is rather nasty--water-slugs and the like,--but it is itself as fat as an ortolan, "almost melts in the _hand_." (Gould.) Its own color, brown spotted with white; "the spots on the wing coverts surrounded with black, which gives them a studded or pearly appearance." (Bewick,--he means by 'pearly,' rounded or projecting.) Hence my specific epithet. Its young are of the liveliest black, "little balls of black glistening down," beautifully put by Mr. Gould among the white water Crowfoot (Ranunculus Aquatilis), looking like little ducklings in mourning. "Its nest is made of rushes and other buoyant materials matted together, so as to float on, and rise or fall with, the ebbing or flowing of the water like a boat; and to prevent its being carried away, it is moored or fastened to a reed." (Bewick.) _