The White Pigeon 89 



it became a living pendulum. I hoped that the ordeal had 

 not been long. 



If there are many ways for the older birds to get into 

 trouble, they are as nothing compared to the difficulties in 

 which the young ones sometimes find themselves. Grim cas- 

 ualties come to mind but I prefer to relate an event which 

 had a happier ending. One day I observed a dirty brown 

 object the size of a golf ball which slowly moved on the 

 marsh bank and wriggled and showed a convulsive kind of 

 animation. I suppose that years of wildlife observance sharp- 

 ens one's responsiveness to movement, for I saw it instantly 

 even though it blended almost perfectly with its surround- 

 ings, and in spite of the fact that the canoe was moving 

 quite rapidly. Completely nonplussed, I braked with the pad- 

 dle and moved back to inspect it. I had to get within a yard 

 before I realized that this animated ball of dirt was a young 

 duckling. The thin layer of mud so covered it that I could 

 not identify it until I took a small piece of branch and gently 

 rubbed off patches. It lay in a hollow not much larger than 

 my cupped hand. Almost exhausted, it struggled, stopped, 

 resumed struggling, and squirmed like a turtle that had been 

 turned on its back. What held it there? From the bow of the 

 canoe I managed to reach and run my hands around it, which 

 procedure showed that it was a young mallard firmly trapped 

 beneath an imbedded stick of pencil size. The stick projected 

 at an angle which, in combination with the curvature of the 

 hollow, proved to be a trap which held the bird more firmly 

 as it pressed forward to free itself. How long it had been 

 struggling was doubtful, how much longer it would have 

 continued as equally uncertain, but of this I am sure— it 

 would have been doomed if I had not passed just as it was 

 making another effort to release itself. 



Such examples of marsh difficulty were quickly terminated; 

 others dragged on for weeks. There was the case of the gull 

 which temporarily became a shorebird. Six different kinds of 



