THE MOTHER MURRE 77 



with two fingers with my whole hand, while the 

 loud camera click-clacked, click-clacked hardly four 

 feet away ! 



It was a thrilling moment. I was not killing any- 

 thing. I had no long-range rifle in my hands, com- 

 ing up against the wind toward an unsuspecting 

 creature hundreds of yards away. This was no 

 wounded leopard charging me ; no mother-bear de- 

 fending with her giant might a captured cub. It 

 was only a mother-bird, the size of a wild duck, with 

 swift wings at her command, hiding under those 

 wings her own and another's young, and her own 

 boundless fear ! 



For the second time in my life I had taken cap- 

 tive with my bare hands a free wild bird. No, I had 

 not taken her captive. She had made herself a cap- 

 tive ; she had taken herself in the strong net of her 

 mother-love. 



And now her terror seemed quite gone. At the 

 first touch of my hand I think she felt the love re- 

 straining it, and without fear or fret she let me reach 

 under her and pull out the babies. But she reached 

 after them with her bill to tuck them back out of 

 sight, and when I did not let them go, she sidled 

 toward me, quacking softly, a language that I per- 

 fectly understood, and was quick to respond to. I 

 gave them back, fuzzy and black and white. She 

 got them under her, stood up over them, pushed her 

 wings down hard around them, her stout tail down 



