3 2 4 



SUMMER 



quickly as they came. Some hungry jack is playing the part 

 of an ogre below, and the scared little creatures are fleeing 

 him in terror. 



As the observer sits or prowls around among these rush- 

 margined Norfolk lagoons, he finds much to interest him. 

 There are swimming and diving birds of many kinds croak- 

 ing and clucking and quacking around, whilst smaller 

 species, living among the sedges and interminable reed-beds, 

 pipe and chirp, and warble and chatter all the livelong day, 



and often into the night. At eventide the swallows and the 

 starlings in their hundreds arrive from the surrounding 

 countryside for miles and miles, to spend a clean-bedded, 

 tick-proof night's slumbering on the reed-stems, rocked 

 by the cool night breeze as it pushes its way among the 

 labyrinths of reeds and rushes. 



That elusive, wary animal, the otter, still lives here ; per- 

 haps even more numerously than most would think in the 

 fastnesses of these swamps. Occasionally the more prying 

 nature-lover, who is not content to loiter and navigate his 

 craft in the more open and frequented ways, comes suddenly 

 upon the wreckage of a fine plump fish among the stubbly 

 ' rondage,' or on some swampy corner, which an otter has 



