Clare's supposition that "At distance from the water's edge Or hanging sallow's farthest stretch The moorhen builds her nest of sedge Safe from destroying schoolboy's reach.
Perhaps Mrs. Moorhen was not altogether satisfied at first, for she watched very carefully from among the rushes and roots to see when and where Jock fed.
From time to time he would look with a patronising eye upon Mrs. Moorhen who often brought her little black babies past the door of his house when the mantle of summer was spread over the land.
A moorhen ventures forth from under the arches, her favourite hiding-place, and feeds among the weeds by the shore, but at the least movement rushes back to shelter.
Penetrating the clear water, the light revealed the tiniest stone at the bottom: but there was no fish, no water-rat, or moorhen on this side.
Directly afterwards a moorhen swam out, and began to search among the edge of the tangled weeds.
Carefully looking over that side again, the moorhen who had been out rushed back; the water-rat was gone.
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.
I doubt if the wild duck, teal, little grebe, and moorhen succeed in rearing many young in this most dangerous water.
The moorhen and wood-pigeon also flourish, and in a still greater degree the missel-thrush, throstle, and blackbird.
Simply by lowering the banks at a few points and planting some reeds and rushes, it would quickly attract those two very common and always interesting London species, the moorhen and the little grebe.
As it is, the dabchick seldom succeeds in hatching eggs, and even the semi-domestic and easily satisfied moorhen finds it hard to rear any young.
Among the recent bird-colonists of London, we find that the moorhen and ringdove have established themselves here, but in very small numbers.
This moorhen was quietly feeding on the margin, but became greatly excited on the appearance, a little distance away, of a second bird.
Nay, my lady, they have no horses at the Moorhen fit for your ladyship to drive.
The small bar-parlour at the Moorhen was full to overflowing when her ladyship's coach drove up.
Wrapped in his greatcoat, he had oft watched the tiny lizards darting to and fro in the grass, or listened to the melancholy cry of moorhen or heron.
Sir Humphrey Challoner had not returned to the Moorhen after his visit to the forge until the sun was very low down in the west.
Now I would give a hundred guineas to any person who will bring me those letters at the Moorhen to-morrow.
The small lattice window gave upon the side of the house, she could not see the coach or who this latest arrival at the Moorhen was; but what mattered that?
The cry of a moorhen thrice repeated at intervals roused him from his dreams.
The Moor was silent and at peace: only at times there came the sound of a gentle flutter, a moorhen perhaps within its nest, or a belated lizard seeking its home.
A moorhen then rose and scuttled down the brook, her legs dragging along the surface some distance before she could get up, and the sunshine sparkling on the water that dropped from her.
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.
Slowly a course was shaped out of the creek--past the bar and then along the edge of the thick weeds, stretching so far out into the water that the moorhen feeding near the land was beyond reach of shot.
The chain-trail of the moorhen reduplicated itself.
She decided to go halves, to take two and leave two in the nest to console the moorhen when she came back.
They had indeed robbed the poor moorhen at the very moment when her chicks were in the process of hatching.
The nightingales sang, the thrushes flew out before them, the wild duck andmoorhen glanced on the pools.
Not many yards from the noisy boys some fowls were picking about on the turf close to the pond; presently out of the rushes came a moorhen and joined them.
At the same moment that I startled this brood out of the rushes a moorhen swam slowly out, accompanied by her mate.
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.
But the still depths were covered then with a green film of weed, crossed and re-crossed with a very labyrinth of tracks, where rat or moorhen or water-rail had cut its devious way.
The moorhen rides in company with the little fleet of ducks upon the pool, though she draws hastily away when the miller lounges through the door to open the sluice, her nodding head keeping time to the quick beating of her paddles.
This latter species is much more familiar than the Kingfisher, and it is astonishing how the Moorhen will continue to haunt such a spot long after the entire aspect of it has been changed.
No one could have thought that this moorhen had any idea of diverting attention from her young to herself.
When the male and female moorhen stand, together, on the nest, it is impossible to distinguish one from the other.
Having often disturbed birds under these or similar conditions, I can say confidently that the moorhen employs no ruse, to divert attention from its young.
As I say, no eggs were ever laid in these three nests, but in one of them I once found the moorhen who had laid in the other, sitting with her brood of young chicks.
But whatever the explanation may be, this particular moorhen that I saw certainly did destroy five of its own eggs, carrying them off, speared on its bill, in the way I have described.
Especially is the hen moorhen of a nervous and sensitive temperament, open to “thick-coming fancies,” varying from minute to minute.
The way in which the moorhen carried the eggs is interesting, since it is that employed by ravens in the Shetlands, when they rob the sea-fowl.
Supper was served in the kitchen, where Mavis partook of a rabbit and moorhen pie with new potatoes and young mangels mashed.
As the fox trotted up the hillside path, the moorhen joined her mate in the tangle of the reeds, and, without fear, wandered over the marshy ground in the neighbourhood of her nest.
The moorhen called again from the reeds near the ford, then flew away over the fire-flushed river and disappeared into the gloom; and a water-vole dropped with a gentle plash into the pool.
Seeing a moorhen dive, he would call the dogs around him, so that they might bring the bird again to the surface and thus afford him sport.
But as the night drew on, a moorhen ventured from the shelter of the alders, and, like a tiny, buoyant boat, launched out into the pool.
A moorhen splattered out from the willow-roots, and Brighteye crouched motionless, till he recognised that the noise made by the clumsy bird was almost as familiar to him as the rustle of the reeds in a breeze.
This continued for some few minutes, when I shot at the spot, and immediately a moorhenrose to the surface.
If the weather is severe, the moorhen will come up from the brook, though two fields distant, in the night, and the marks of her feet may be traced round the house.
When alarmed, after diving, themoorhen does not always come right up to the surface, but merely protrudes its head to breathe.
The only things that caught my eye were a moorhen and the trail of light she left behind her as she swam the gloomy water, which was shadowed by some alders.
I see no reason to doubt the fact of the Moorhen occasionally breeding in Mr. De Putron's pond, and perhaps in other places in the Island, especially the Grand Mare.
The moorhen has an hereditary or instinctive capacity for swimming and diving, but the latter is not so easily called into activity as the former.
In a moment the moorhen dived, disappeared from view, and soon partially reappeared, his head just peeping above the water beneath the overhanging bank.
The particularmoorhen in question had enjoyed about two months of swimming experience, which probably counted for something, but in the course of that experience nothing had pulled the trigger of the diving capacity.
On an eventful day the young moorhen saw and heard the dog; it was emotionally excited; it probably did to some extent intelligently appreciate a novel and meaningful situation.
The Moorhen can both swim and dive, and he flies well when fairly on the wing; but as his real flights take place, as a rule, at night, very little is known about them.
Mark aimed at one, but he was he thought not quite near enough: Bevis poled faster, when themoorhen at the splash began to rise, scuttling and dragging the long hanging legs along the surface.
The force of his fall carried him under water, but he rose directly and brought the moorhen back to them.
Mark had now shot three moorhens, a coot, and a dab-chick, but what pleased him most was the moorhen he had hit while flying, though but one shot had taken effect.
A moorhen swam, and her imago followed beneath, unbroken, so gently did she part the water that no ripple confused it.
The moorhen doubled into the bamboos and sedges, but they were so thick they hindered her progress, and Pan snapped her up in a moment.
Bevis dragged him on board--the moorhen in his mouth--by the neck, for he could not climb over the bulwarks from the water.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "moorhen" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
