IN DUTCH WATER MEADOWS 203 



on a patch of thrift, not far from the water's edge, the 

 old birds played and fed close by us, swinging side- 

 ways, their slender turned-up beaks like strips of bent 

 whalebone splashing visibly at times with the strokes, 

 and ran bent forward through the water, sometimes 

 breast-high, with a quick, jerky, and rather laboured 

 step, the position of the body and action suggestive of 

 a long-legged, paddling child in a great hurry to get a 

 shrimping-net on shore. 



The neck, as the bird ran or fed, was commonly 

 drawn backwards with a curve like the droop of the 

 dewlap of a cow. The young birds, of which we caught 

 two in different stages of growth, mimic their mother's 

 steps as they run, and could be identified by this even 

 without the fascinating little baby nez retroussi which 

 makes mistake impossible. One, a little striped puff- 

 ball, which could not have been many hours out of the 

 egg when we found it, feigned desperate illness rather 

 too well, and was all but pocketed as past all hope 

 of recovery, but when left alone, unobserved as it 

 supposed, on the grass for a few minutes, rose quietly, 

 and after creeping slowly through the stalks for a foot 

 or two, reached a sandy ' grip,' when it set off running 

 at a pace miraculous for so small a creature. 



The legs of the old birds are bare for some inches 

 above the joint, which is very prominent, and are of a 

 silvery grey, not many shades removed from Cambridge 

 blue, and are more slender than in the pretty picture 

 in Lord Lilford's book. 



In flight the legs are tucked tightly under the tail, of 



