42 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



go further afield seek out the great bird haunts in 

 other countries. 



But the feeling is incommunicable, and is a trea- 

 sured memory and secret, a joy for ever in the heart. 

 Those who do not know it — who have had no oppor- 

 tunity of finding out for themselves — cannot imagine 

 it. To these it may seem strange that any man should 

 turn his back on the comforts of civilised life to spend 

 long laborious days in dreary desert regions, scorched 

 by tropical suns, devoured by mosquitoes, wading in 

 pestilential swamps; not for sport, the fascination of 

 which is universally known, but just for the sake of 

 seeing a populous rookery or congregation of big birds 

 in their breeding haunts. Those who do know will 

 bear these discomforts, and even greater ones, for 

 the sake of that glorious gladness which the sight 

 will produce in them. This rather than the notes 

 and bundle of photographs which they bring back 

 is what they have gone out to seek. 



