56 By Leafy Ways. 



perhaps a great mass of pond weed bars the way 

 altogether. Thickets have grown over the entrance ; 

 the very trees bend down into the water. 



At length we are clear. Round the lake there rises 

 a green wall of foliage. The shore is dense with tall 

 reeds, in whose recesses rise the strange voices of 

 unseen water-fowl. 



A brilliant kingfisher flashes off from his Ration on 

 an over-hanging bough ; a water-rail steals silently 

 away at our approach. A party of crested grebes 

 sailing in and out of the tall clumps of giant rushes 

 utter strange warbling cries. Sedge-warblers climb 

 about among the slender stems, or balance themselves 

 on the feathered plumes of the sedges. 



Suddenly, with a chorus of musical notes, a little 

 company of birds alight close at hand among the tops 

 of the reeds. 



The soft and brilliant tones of their exquisite colour- 

 ing, and their strange metallic call-notes as they swing 

 from their unsteady foothold on the swaying stems 

 show them to be no other than bearded tits, the most 

 characteristic birds of the district. 



He is a happy man who is fortunate enough to 

 catch sight of these exquisite little creatures as with 

 graceful, dexterous attitudes they search eagerly for 

 food. 



Driven from its haunts by the draining of the fens, 

 no longer a tenant of the Essex marshes, a rare 

 straggler up and down the country, the bearded tit is 



