3 o8 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



And if you watch the colony, and can bear with their wild cries, 

 that can be heard for miles, you will see strange flutterings 

 and bustlings on the shore the pairings and you scarce 

 can tell when they have paired. When April shall have run 

 her round, comes the serious business of laying the blotched 

 eggs, in their rough nests of broken-down reed and gladen, 

 slim and precarious lake-dwellings. These nests are often 

 placed closely together, two nests occupying a space as large 

 as my writing-desk. And there is such a hurrying and com- 

 motion all through incubation ; and when the beautiful little 

 downy creatures leave the nest, as they do a few days after 

 being hatched, all the broad is a wild scene, recalling a Nor- 

 wegian fiord. The little puits swim around the little lily 

 leaves, eating flies and worms, whilst the old birds dart about, 

 gleaming against the azure, and filling the welkin with their 

 nvysterious oceanic voices. And should you appear, push- 

 ing stealthily over the waters from behind a reed-bed, the 

 nearest birds will topple and throw themselves over in the 

 vernal blue, shrieking and fluttering down, trying to hide 

 their young, who swim quickly to the reed or gladen 

 beds, for I have never seen either fledgling or old bird 

 dive. 



Some birds, having been robbed, will be seen sitting on a 

 second clutch ; and perhaps you may see a great saddleback 

 gull suddenly sail out of the sky and sweep down amid a 

 noisy commotion, killing some young with bill and claw, amid 

 the furious assaults of the white-breasted mariners. But these 

 pirates are always successful, as are the rats, who steal at 

 dead of night upon the eggs, devouring them ; for your rat 

 is a deadly enemy to the puit, and many another bird 

 besides. 



And when the young mouths are many, you see the old 

 birds hawking till dark, when they perch (rather clumsily) 

 upon the broken-down gladen-stalks, now a formless mass 

 of decaying vegetation ; for they delight sitting upon stalks 

 just rising above the stagnant waters of the lagoon, and 



