AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR 



loses all his quills and the power of flight. The cygnets 

 now make incessant demands that he shall fish for 

 water- weeds. They have little of the precocity of ducks, 

 are babies enough to enjoy pickaback rides, and it will 

 be a year before they are promoted to white feathers. 



A LITTLE grebe is seen buoyantly floating on a pond: 

 something causing alarm, it sinks like a 

 Birds Like plummet, until only its head is above the 

 Submarines surface. Danger still threatening, the head 

 sinks until only the tip of the bill is showing. 

 Other divers, ducks and cormorants, know the trick, 

 but ornithologists confess it passes their comprehension. 

 Young moorhens will hide by floating submerged 

 below lily-leaves, and have a trick, not usually 

 practised by more professional diving ducks, of using 

 wings as oars. 



A YOUNG barn-owl, mistaking moonlit water for a solid 

 substance, flew from a tower of Bodiam 

 The Castle Castle, in Sussex, into the moat seventy 

 Owls feet below, and, becoming entangled in 



water-lilies, was unable to rise. This feudal 

 castle is a thing of sheer beauty, its grey walls rising out 

 of water now sheeted with that white lily which the 

 poet demanded should be given him before the pas- 

 sionate rose: 



A long-stemmed lily from the lake, 

 Cold as a coiling water-snake. 



And, like snakes, the lilies to-day hold fast the un- 

 ruffled form of the floating bird. 

 96 



