200 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



at that distance they appeared like clouds of starlings 

 in the evening at their winter roosting haunts. Pre- 

 sently the clouds dispersed or settled on the water 

 again, and for a little space it seemed a silent world. 

 Then a new sound was heard from some distant spot 

 perhaps a mile away — a great chorus of wild ringing 

 jubilant cries, echoing and re-echoing all over that 

 illimitable watery expanse ; and I knew it was the 

 crane — the giant crane that hath a trumpet sound ! 



These birds were all very real to me, seen very 

 vividly, their voices so loud and clear that they startled 

 and thrilled me ; but the long-haired brown-skinned 

 marshman who was my boatman was seen less dis- 

 tinctly. The anthropological reader will be disap- 

 pointed to learn that no clear image was retained of his 

 height, build, features, and the colour of his eyes and 

 hair, and that the sense of all his wild jabber and 

 gestures has quite gone out of my memory. 



From all this greatness of wild bird life, seen in a 

 vision, I returned to reality and to very small things ; 

 one of which came as a pleasant surprise. I went on to 

 the Cheddar valley and near Winscombe I dropped in 

 on an old friend, a writer and a lover of birds, who had 

 built himself a charming bungalow among the Mendips. 

 We had tea on the terrace, a nice cool rose and creeper- 

 shaded place after my long hot ramble, a green lawn 

 beneath us, with a row of large pine trees on its other 

 side. My friend was telling me of a flock of crossbills 

 which to his delight had been haunting the place for 

 some days past, when lo ! down came the very birds, 



