CALLING ON THE MARSH BIRDS 



487 



bittern, coot and crake, yellow- 

 legs, weak-winged silver grebe 

 and the smaller pied grebe, gal- 

 linule — the common mudhen — 

 Virginia rail, red bittern, a rare 

 woodcock, our big jacksnipe 

 and the little English snipe, 

 came in their own time and fash- 

 ion. All the feathered songsters 

 of the marsh, wrens, canaries, 

 redwings and grackles, came to 

 open the season's concert. The 

 kingbird came, trailing his coat- 

 tail for trouble, as usual, and 

 myriad swallows. Kingfishers, 

 the birds of prey and carrion 

 birds — hawks, eagles, owls, 

 crows — all streamed northward 

 overhead, mainly in the daytime, 

 a noisy, squawking, quacking, 

 singing host — until all the lake, 

 the marsh and drowned lands 

 were thickly dotted with the 

 homecomers. 



So now our cedar canoe lay on 

 the shore, laden with cameras 

 and many devices for concealing 

 us. A heavy fog hung over the 

 lake, but we noticed that the 

 arriving flocks of swallows sped 

 past the north point of the Beaver 

 and on towards the river's 

 mouth. Guided by these birds, 

 that seemed to shoot out of the 

 mist behind and speed straight 

 along parallel with the canoe and disappear 

 into the dense curtain ahead, we made our 

 way, jumping many a flock of webfeet, until 

 nearing the marsh we heard the full chorus 

 of the motley throng break out as the sun 

 burst forth and the wind rolled the fog up 

 and disclosed the lake and our swiftly -steal- 

 ing canoe. A square mile of marsh, bog and 

 drowned land spread out before us, all 

 yellow with the dead flags, the standing, 

 rustling golden oats, the matted wild rice 

 straw, green where the muskrats and the 

 ducks had pulled up heaps of wild onions — 

 the muskrat apples of the Mississaugas — or 

 floating masses of succulent wild celery, 

 tangled bunches of parrot grass, sprouting 

 points of the flags. The sloping shores of 

 the river banks were sere and dead beneath 

 their black alders and willows and swamp 



A HERON, WITH CREST RAISED IN ANGER 



maples — but all throbbed with the feathered 

 game we were so anxious to photograph, 

 and the tall, rustling cover hid many an 

 enemy, more real than we were perhaps 

 fancied: the little brown mink crashed 

 along its hidden paths, weasels dodged 

 under old bog roots, stoat arched their backs 

 beside the muskrat houses and the birds of 

 prey hovered incessantly over the scene. 

 Into this bird haven our long, olive-green 

 canoe entered, a fearful monster, no doubt, 

 to the timorous inhabitants, with its long, 

 shining shell and the two heads and four 

 arms that bobbed and worked ominously. 



From bog to bank, along the little chan- 

 nels in the marsh, we paddled the canoe, but 

 of all the feathered game not a single one 

 had commenced nest-building, nor did they 

 for many days. The spring flood was still 



