SUMMER HOURS ON BREYDON 145 



clump. There was a fat young cuckoo in the nest, and the 

 rightful tenants had been shouldered out. We looked for 

 them, but no doubt some water-vole had found them for a 

 tit-bit and had eaten them. How the young usurper resented 

 our interference, snapping viciously at our fingers, and pro- 

 testing with every lifted feather ! We could have wrung his 

 neck for a couple of pins, but that he was now all in all to his 

 foster-parents, the silly dupes ! who fed him assiduously, en- 

 joying in their ignorance that protective instinct which passes 

 for good works and parental care, though they must at times 

 have thought their baby an ugly prodigy, and sighed over the 

 labour he gave them. Their misplaced love kept them busy 

 enough, searching for aphis, slug, and spider, and hunting 

 for many a caterpillar. . . . 



It is now midnight. Everything around has blended into 

 indistinctness save for the dusky outline of solid things 

 the distant trees, the mill behind us and the bank-top that 

 ends in darkness. A few stars twinkle overhead and are re- 

 flected in the ditch we are moored in, making the shallow 

 " cut " appear unfathomable. Moths still flutter in the glow- 

 ing light that escapes through the houseboat's open door, 

 dancing in gaily only to burn their "toes," and scare them- 

 selves around the lamp-glass. And tiny "gnats" or mos- 

 quitoes, with screamy buzz, trip in eccentric flight under 

 the cabin roof, now and again coming to grief against the 

 hot lamp-glass. 



Many of the noises the low of a sleepy bullock, the croak 

 of marsh-bird, and the hum of droning beetle have all but 

 ceased. A few nocturnal species are still a-foot and a-wing, 

 but they are silent as behoves those who prowl when others 

 sleep. Once we hear the scuffle of a rat with his fellow the 

 manners of Mus decumanus are very apparent ; there was a 

 fight for the possession of a stranded roach at the sluice end. 

 We note the quack of a passing fowl, and the wail of a 

 wandering curlew. We hear, too, a strange medley of gull 

 cries borne over the marshes from Breydon ; something has 

 disturbed their slumbers on the flat. These nocturnal calls 

 and pipings are by no means unpleasant, for they add a 

 fitting weirdness to the night. 



The pleasantest of all the night-cries is that of the lap- 

 wing. Two. of them are nesting on a marsh hard by ; one is 



