236 OUT WITH THE BIRDS 



weighed : " Crows move in looser companies and 

 do not drift about so ; blackbird hosts form more 

 compact masses, wheel about speedily, and 

 change shape every moment; ducks move more 

 quickly and do not hold together for any time; 

 gulls then it ought to be." And gulls they were, 

 the little Franklin in hosts, coming home for the 

 night after the day's excursion afield. The 

 glasses soon found several such companies work- 

 ing lakewards, and during the next half hour 

 they congregated in a huge swarm out far from 

 shore — a great living raft to float through the 

 coming night. 



By and by a penetrating shout sounded out of 

 the northward, and along came six sandhill 

 cranes. With slow flap and but a few yards in 

 the air, they worked straight out across the lake. 

 They could not join the gulls or pelicans or 

 ducks rafting out in mid-lake, and they had no 

 notion of trying, but in spite of this apparenty 

 useless journeying, there was a deep-laid plan in 

 their heads. It seems that the constant problem 

 of the wary sandhill crane is to hide his night- 

 roost, and these fellows were bent on stealing low 

 across the water to drop down upon a point of 

 the bare prairie shore on the farther side. There 



