CHAPTER XIV 



BIRDS OF THE SHORE AND THE MARSH 



UP the Indian River, nestling in one of its 

 small, deep curves, was a hay field that 

 was the scene of a sad tragedy. Where 

 the field bordered on the river bank the ground 

 was soft and moist and the grass grew tall and 

 rank. Here, unknown to anyone, the Bittern 

 had made her nest of sticks and coarse grasses. 

 Like all birds, she had chosen a nesting place 

 where she was not easily distinguished. The 

 Bitterns, pointing their beaks upwards among 

 coarse, rank stocks, look like structures of the 

 vegetation, and so, although often their note, 

 which sounds so like the stroke of a mallet on a 

 stake that it gives them the name of stake 

 driver, had been heard, no one knew just where 

 they were nesting. Excellent timothy grew in 

 some parts of the field and, as that year hay 

 was scarce, the mower was run over even that 

 coarse grass near the river, and in its route 

 along the bank it came upon the nest of baby 

 Bitterns and two were killed. 

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