Country Life
By IAN NIALL
A MAN I met along the road today was complaining that he was quite worn out searching for secret nests, the bugbear of the amateur poultrykeeper who cannot dream of regimenting his birds and loves to see them scraping and scratching where they will: I have spent many hours myself assisting in the search for vagrant hens and clandestine clutches, and know how exasperating it can be. One, I remember, fooled us all by creeping into a vinery and subsequently bringing off a family of fifteen. Another had laid her egg each day on the top of a wall along the side of which we frequently passed. One of the strangest stories of laying away is that recounted by an elderly friend who daily sought to find the net of a par- ticularly cunning hen. That the bird was laying in the orchard was obvious, but when she was shadowed she was never detected in the act of going to the nest. Every inch of the ground was searched and the nest remained undiscovered until, one day, looking aloft when he heard a slight noise, my friend saw the head of the hen protruding over the edge of a pigeon's nest, twenty-six feet from the ground. From this perilous perch the hen eventually brOught a brood of chicks to the ground, but how she got them down no one ever discovered.
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