At Home with Wild Nature 



submerged by the flood. With the driest dead grass to 

 be found under the overhanging bank of a neighbouring 

 dyke I speedily built her wee home above the level of 

 the water and replaced her eggs. Retiring some dis- 

 tance away I turned my field-glasses on the place and 

 enjoyed the great satisfaction of watching the redshank 

 fly back and resume her task of nidification as if nothing 

 whatever had happened. 



Now let us see how the sitting lapwing on the mud- 

 flat had fared. I reasoned with myself that her home 

 and its contents must assuredly be under water. Not 

 a bit of it. The intelligent bird had added materials to 

 her nest to such purpose that it formed a little island 

 in a lake some two inches deep, and the eggs were lying 

 high and dry on a collection of scraps of dead seaweed, 

 grass stems, and other small items of flotsam and jetsam 

 picked up from the sandy shores of an enclosed sheet 

 of water close at hand. Unfortunately I had not 

 photographed the nest as I originally found it, and 

 it was of no use doing so afterwards, because 

 my chance of producing a convincing comparison had 

 vanished. 



Side by side with the most startling gleams of in- 

 telligence in birds and beasts we sometimes come upon 

 examples of the most profound stupidity, even in the 

 same individuals. On one occasion I installed myself in 

 a small, green, hiding-tent erected close to a lesser tern's 

 nest containing a single chick. There were plenty of 

 other nests belonging to members of the same species 

 all round me, and the sitting females were being fed 



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