THE SHITEPOKE 77 



think I was more than fifty feet from him, but as I had 

 been walking along the edge of the creek, my head being 

 lower than the bank, he had not seen me nor heard the 

 sound of my bare feet on the mud. It seemed to me that 

 we stood there an endless length of time, for no reason 

 that I could understand unless it could be that he was 

 asleep, and because I was so anxious to see what he was 

 about I stood almost as still as he — ^which probably ex- 

 plains why it seemed so long. Finally, like a bolt of light- 

 ning out of a clear sky the long neck darted forward and 

 the bill and most of the head flashed under the water. 

 Quicker than I can tell it, he straightened up with a craw- 

 fish in his bill. I was fisherman enough to know that if 

 one expects any luck with the finny tribe he must be quiet 

 when he is fishing, but I have never been able, even to 

 the present day, to know why he prefers to stand on one 

 leg with the other drawn up tight to his body when fish- 

 ing. I was so surprized that I made an exclamation suffi- 

 cient to attract his attention and away he flew up the 

 creek, keeping near the water so that his body would not 

 be seen above the sky-line. A comical sight he presented, 

 his long legs dangling, his neck sticking out ahead, and his 

 great wings, large out of all proportion to the size of his 

 body, slowly flapping. I followed as rapidly as I could 

 imtil I reached the place where mother was sitting, eager 

 to call her attention to the bird before it could get out of 

 sight. To my inquiry of ^^What is it?'^ she said, "A shite- 

 poke,^^ and she presumed a pair of them must have a 

 nest somewhere in the swamp near the crabapple and plum 

 thicket, just over the fence, in the edge of Graham's brush. 

 "We went back to work, but after that every time I got 

 a chance I would slip down to the creek and watch this 



