248 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
hungry throats, and every youngster within reach 
scrambled wildly forward, hopeful of a fish 
course. They received but scant courtesy and 
usually a vicious peck tumbled them off the 
branch. I saw a young bird fall to the water, 
and this mishap was from no attack, but due to 
his tripping over his own feet, the claws of one 
foot gripping those of the other in an insane 
clasp, which overbalanced him. He fell through 
a thin screen of vines and splashed half onto a 
small Regia leaf. With neck and wings he strug- 
gled to pull himself up, and had almost suc- 
ceeded when heron and leaf sank slowly, and 
only the bare stem swung up again. A few bub- 
bles led off in a silvery path toward deeper water, 
showing where a crocodile swam slowly off with 
his prey. 
For a time the birds remained still, and then 
crept within the tangles, to their mates or nests, 
or quieted the clamor of the young with warm- 
storage fish. How each one knew its own off- 
spring was beyond my ken, but on three separate 
evenings scattered through one week, I observed 
an individual, marked by a wing-gap of two lost 
feathers, come, within a quarter-hour of six 
o’clock, and feed a great awkward youngster 
