586 



AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. 



the fly-fisher sees them running along the pebbly margin of 

 the Trout stream (as Wilson truly says), " continually nod- 

 ding their heads ;" sometimes starting with their peculiar 

 short shrill note, from their nests in the wave-washed tufts 

 of long grass, flapping along the creek sideways, as if 

 wounded in leg or wing, to decoy the fancied destroyer from 

 the nest of downy little snipelings. And there, where the 

 waters of the noisy rapid finds rest in the broad shallow 

 below, is one perched on a big gray boulder, as gray as her- 

 self. How lonely she seems there, like the last of her race, 

 were it not that her constant mate is on the strand below, 

 busily engaged picking up larva and seedling muscles for its 

 little ones in the nest up the creek. 



