WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 29 



intractable. Although you have tried it again and 

 again with eggs from the wild and have found no 

 fact to justify such imaginings, yet are you still 

 scarcely prepared for what follows. 



The little ducks missing the cover of the mother 

 come out of the nest into the sedge and shallow 

 water. They find one's bare feet as one stands 

 urgent that the camera should arrive and, without 

 the slightest instinctive fear, begin to nestle on them 

 for warmth, one and another turning a comical 

 and intelligent little black eye upwards, as if with 

 nascent wonder at the size and aloofness of this 

 parent. You wonder how long the wild duck has 

 been here. No doubt the hosts of King Alfred, 

 when he hid in these marshes from the Norsemen a 

 thousand years ago, found her here. No doubt the 

 soldiers of Claudius long before him flushed her when 

 they came. Probably even in the days when the 

 woolly rhinoceros left its remains with those of the 

 cave-man in the hills yonder, she was here. During 

 all this time she has probably been the most uni- 

 versally hunted creature on earth. And the spent 

 cartridges of the modern man strew the bog around 

 you. Yet here are these little creatures on your 

 feet. You take one of them in your hand, and 

 this heir of the ages of the blood-feud shows no fear 

 of you, even tilting its little beak to look inquiringly 

 in your face ; evidently thinking no evil, to all 

 appearance hoping all things and believing all things, 

 but certainly quite willing to take you on your 

 merits for good or evil entirely without prejudice. 



You put the little creature down in deep thought 

 and pass on. Looking back, the mother bird has 

 alighted on a tussock near by, and the more active 



