230 THE BEARDED-TIT 



wind among the reeds, but a strange stirring of life in the air, I gently 

 drew my canoe along by hanging on to the adjacent sedges. Soon a 

 series of faint "whuts" proceeded from a little oasis of mud a few yards 

 in front of me, so I stayed still and watched. Crouched on the ooze, and 

 partly concealed by a few decayed reeds, were five young bearded-tits. 

 My face was almost on a level with the water, and as I looked ahead 

 I could distinguish four distinct bands of colour, all mysteriously 

 blended grey water merging into the green of the young " colts," 1 

 surmounted by a vast sweep of golden reed-beds reaching up into the 

 blue haze of a May evening. Somehow the beautiful bearded-tits, 

 both young and old, seemed a part of this colour scheme, and hardly to 

 be separated from it. Presently a fine male, tawny and grey, alighted 

 on a reed-stalk and slipped down it, resenting deeply my intrusion 

 into his domestic circle ; meanwhile his mate rushed hither and 

 thither over the mud, quite ignoring me, bent only on supplying the 

 needs of first one and then the other of her hungry little ones. It 

 was an ideal spot in which to hide a family of young reed-pheasants 

 scarcely able to fly ; at the faintest suspicion of alarm, they could 

 leave the oasis of mud and take refuge in a dense reed-bed close 

 at hand. 



On 5th May 1910, I came upon three families in a similar situa- 

 tion. There were about fifteen young birds dotted around the edge 

 of a little inland lagoon, which was surrounded by a stubbly fringe 

 of reeds ; these had been cut down the previous year and were just 

 beginning to grow. A narrow dyke ran alongside, and again by 

 holding on to the vegetation, I edged my canoe close to the birds 

 and watched. 



The air was full of the hum of insect life, and scores of delicate 

 winged flies were seized by the busy birds for their hungry broods, 

 which, by the bye, are not clamorous as are the young of so many 

 other species, but appear quite contentedly to await their turn. Up in 

 the blue sky redshank were whistling, while lapwings called to one 



1 Local name for them. 



