42 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



others who are able to go further afield seek out the 

 great bird haunts in other countries. 



But the feeling is incommunicable, and is a treasured 

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

 who do not know it — who have had no opportunity 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 rook- 

 ery 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. 



