2 10 BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 



progress. And sometimes, coming upon her asleep, perhaps, 

 on her nest after her young ones had hatched, it was a 

 sight to see how suddenly she vanished, and how the chicks 

 scramblinof out after her in a twinklin-j^, stood on their 

 heads, thinking they too had dived out of sight. I have 

 often taken up the little fluff-balls in my hand, and wished 

 to take them home, but kinder thoughts have supervened, 

 and I have laid them back on the water and watched them 

 paddle off to the shelter where the poor mother, only her 

 red-spot beak showing above water, crouched, clucking 

 nervously in stage whispers, ''This way, this way." 



Sitting at ease one clay watching a family party, I 

 became aware of a rat that was watchino- them as well 

 — a comnion brown farmyard rat — that, with so many 

 others of his kind, haunt osier-beds and streams, and, by 

 their depredations, bring discredit upon the water-vole. The 

 miscreant was on the bank ; the " moor-chickens " were 

 paddling in a dutiful, unsuspicious fashion behind their 

 mother, when one of them, cominof to some weeds, must 

 needs scramble on to the top, to show what a clever bird it 

 was. Something it found there interested it for an instant, 

 and meanwhile all the rest went on. Then I saw the rat 

 slip into the water, and swim towards the little platform of 

 weeds ; and the chick saw it too, and wondered, no doubt, 

 what it was. But it decided that the thing did not look quite 

 right somehow, and got into the water to follow its brothers 



