How Animals Talk 



shores narrowly she would stretch her neck straight 

 up from the water, as if attentive to some wireless 

 message in the air. 



A wild duck does not take that alert attitude 

 unless she is suspicious; and a curious thing was, 

 that though the mother was silent, uttering never 

 a word, the young would crouch and remain mo- 

 tionless wherever they happened to be. Sud- 

 denly, as if certain of danger but unable to locate 

 it, the mother would spring aloft to go sweeping 

 in wide circles over the bog. She seemed to know 

 it by heart, every pool and bump and shadow of 

 it; and when her keen eyes picked up an unfa- 

 miliar shadow on a certain deer-path she would 

 come at it with a rush, whirling over it in an up- 

 ward-climbing spiral till she became sure of me, 

 as of something out of place, when she would 

 speed away with a warning note over the tree- 

 tops. If the young were strong of wing, they 

 would follow her swiftly, giving wide berth to the 

 deer-path as if she had told them beware of it; 

 but if they did not yet trust themselves in the air, 

 they would skulk away, their heads down close 

 to the water, and hide in one of the grassy bogans 

 of the pond, where because of the quaking shore 

 it was impossible to come near them. 



Once, when the mother left in this way, I waited 

 till the ducklings had been some minutes hidden 



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