The water-lilies at Wicken Fen have a parallel in the
lilies at Alderfen Broad, which readers of the Spectator (as the Secretary of the Norfolk Naturalist's Trust writes to say) are helping to buy. The white and yellow varieties are found there in conjunction, but the white are as 20 to 1 of the yellow, though nearby the proportion is reversed. One begins to associate the Illy with a particular bird, the stately and no longer rare great-crested grebe. One of the most surprising habits in any of our birds is the rare speed with which the brooding bird covers her eggs when she leaves the nest. I have come within some fifteen yards of her before she saw me, yet before I could get to the nest she had dived, returned with a piece or two of submerged lily leaf and com- pletely covered her eggs. Is it true, I wonder, as some Broadsmen hold, that the leaf of the lily is better than other leaves for keeping in the heat ? It is perhaps a reasonable inference from its stout softness that it is a bad conductor of heat ; though mere juxtaposition is doubtless the reason of its choice. The little grebe often prefers sedge for the purpose
Previous page
