THE HAUNTS OF COOT AND HERON 91 



without attracting attention. She jumps clean out 

 of the water not, however, to fly away, for alas ! 

 she falls back again heavily and apparently helplessly 

 a yard away, painfully flapping a broken wing. 

 You are conscious that her brood scattered cheeping 

 in all directions as she rose from the water, but your 

 eye is back again in an instant, and lo ! there is not 

 one to be seen, and the cheeping has ceased almost as 

 soon as it began. There is no longer, you notice, 

 the least tell-tale tremor in the sedge to show where 

 they have gone. The old bird continues her antics 

 with the broken wing. You have seen the sports- 

 man's victim acted in real life, and you know that 

 even a professional medium could not more thor- 

 oughly abandon herself to her part. You may watch 

 her at leisure, for she does not in her sad plight 

 seem able to get under cover quickly. Her callow 

 offspring you will see no more. 



Often as the writer has witnessed this little scene 

 enacted, it has never ceased to fill him with surprise. 

 He has often set himself to watch how it is done, 

 but he has never been successful. He has surprised 

 the mother bird in a patch of sedge so short that 

 there has been practically no cover, and yet he has 

 not seen the young birds dive for dive they must 

 the antics of the mother bird always, in spite of 

 self, engaging the first glance of the eye. Nor, 

 stranger still, has he ever seen the little divers emerge 

 again, although of course they cannot remain per- 

 manently under water. Sometimes, but very rarely, 

 you will come across a little downy body in the 

 water with legs hanging motionless downwards, and 

 only the little beak projecting just above the water, 

 looking like the broken-off end of a last year's bul- 



