FEBRUARY 53 



thick-set reeds, giving place here and there to tumps of 

 sedge between which are unknown depths of mire. A 

 black-capped Reed Bunting chirps from a bending 

 osier twig. A pike goes out from the shallows with a 

 swirl, and here floats a dead roach with a wound in its 

 shoulder, where it has been stabbed by the Heron's 

 bayonet. Our boatman tells how the bill of a fine old 

 male heron turned orange and crimson with sudden 

 flushes of rage as it fought with a dog when wounded. 

 On either hand one hears Coots, quarrelsome as always, 

 scuffling in the reeds. A Water Rail, surprised amongst 

 the sedge, takes wing, showing its red bill as it flies. 

 As our lane of water opens out upon a quiet expanse, 

 coots scatter hastily for cover, dabchicks bob beneath 

 the surface and moorhens splash away, leaving silvery 

 tracks, or oar their way more quietly to the shelter of 

 the reeds. They show some sagacity in the choice of 

 sites for their nests, sometimes building them up to a 

 height of eighteen inches to be prepared for a sudden 

 rise of the water, or even, after repeated losses on 

 account of floods, nesting in the bushes overhanging 

 the stream. After dark the air is full of quackings 

 and of the calls of various wading birds then upon 

 the move. 



The "broad" in question is rapidly becoming filled up 

 by a tangled mass of the stiff-leaved floating plant known 

 as the water-soldier/ Its further end, where it branches 

 into three or four secluded arms, is the site of a duck 



