202 IN DUTCH WATER MEADOWS 



tradition, destroyed in the first half of the last century 

 for the sake of the birds' feathers, which were in request 

 at the time for making artificial flies. 



No one who has only seen an Avocet stuffed can 

 form any idea of the grace of outline and motion of 

 the living bird, nor of the bewildering permutations 

 and combinations of its zebra stripes of black and 

 white. 



For half a moment, as it settles, the bird is still, and 

 you see two distinct horseshoes of jet on a snowball. 

 Before the roughest sketch is possible the position of 

 the restless wings shifts and the horseshoes meet and 

 open into a double heart, one inside the other. It 

 rises, breast towards you, and you see a bird, pure 

 white excepting at the wing- tips, which look as if 

 dipped in ink. It turns sharply off, with the everlast- 

 ing ' Kiew ! kiew ! ' and you seem to be looking, not at a 

 bird, but an overgrown Bath-white ' Butterfly. 



At last you have had one quiet before you long 

 enough to be satisfied at least that the tail is black, 

 and are hurriedly scratching a sketch accordingly, 

 when the black flies up on the tips of the wing and 

 the bird is off, turning towards you a tail of the purest 

 white. 



They were very plentiful, and wonderfully tame. We 

 must have seen something like fifty on the one corner 

 of the polder, to which they seemed mainly to confine 

 themselves, and where we found both eggs and young 

 birds. 



As we lay for luncheon on our macintoshes spread 



