CATALOGUE OF BIRDS. IO3 



make more in one direction than another, and by 

 occasionally altering my points of observation I 

 practically decided that it was under a boulder, 

 either at the back or side of a cascade coming from 

 a sort of basin in the river, the water flowing through 

 an aperture to the rocks below. Having got this 

 far with my conclusions I asked the landlord of the 

 hotel to accompany me next morning, and see what 

 he could make of it, but he was non-plussed. Not 

 wishing to keep him from his hotel duties I told him 

 not to stay any longer, but that I was determined to 

 find the exact locality myself before returning. 



Now, the habit of the Water-Ouzel is to feed the 

 youngsters for lo to 15 minutes, go away then for 

 half an hour and return, so availing myself of their 

 absence I built up a little screen of oak-leaf boughs 

 in the bed of the river, whence I could look straight 

 up in the direction of the cascade where they had 

 always disappeared from view — owing to my in- 

 ability to follow them with my eye any further. I 

 had just comfortably settled myself in my new 

 position when one of the birds appeared on the top 

 of the cascade with food in its beak. I was looking 

 through the interstices of the leaves of my screen ; it 

 was most interestingf to watch the bird's diffidence 

 about going to the nest; it kept bobbing and curtsey- 

 ing as these birds do, and looking well about it 

 before entering ; then it dropped down into some 

 rocks below the fall, hesitated again for some time, 

 then making up its mind rushed up an incline in the 

 rocks to a boulder that lay on one side of the 



