THE GREAT NORTHERN DIVER THE LOON 



prop-like wings; there he rested, breathing 

 heavily, too weak to fly, too tired to walk. 

 Poor young bird! I have no idea what he 

 thought of the two big animals that emerged 

 from the cover of branches. Anyway, he 

 gathered enough strength to scramble 

 rapidly away. Another handsome heron we 

 took stared at the lens, his crest raised in 

 anger, wondering what the flashing, one- 

 eyed reptile in the grass was; its jarring 

 note, as his photograph was taken, made 

 him stiffen all over, crouch until his long 

 legs were bent together backwards, for they 

 hinge that way, then leap with a hoarse, 

 grunting squawk of alarm. It is a sight of a 

 lifetime to watch one of these patient fishers. 

 He will stand in the shallow water, stiff as a 

 pair of poles. When the unwary fish swim 

 near, there is a flash as the long, sharp bill 

 sweeps through the air, a spraying, splash- 

 ing struggle as the glittering fish curves in 

 his mouth. Up, up goes the head, the perch 

 is held aloft, slowly righted, turned head- 

 first and swallowed with the most alarming 

 muscular contortions eye ever witnessed. 

 Bulging out the neck as it twists and turns 

 and throws itself forward in its final efforts 



to down the fish, the bird seemingly escapes 

 death by choking by the fraction of an inch. 



All along the bog's edge the wrens and the 

 redwings built, hanging their nests on flags 

 and red willows. Beneath, the rails and the 

 crakes and the mudhens built their well- 

 woven homes. The wrens, in a perfect 

 ectasy of nest building, made sometimes as 

 many as three grass and flag- woven homes, 

 twisting and crimping the grasses with their 

 bills in a most mechanical manner. Soon all 

 the bog looked like some wild orchard, 

 closely grown with dwarf fruit trees laden 

 with their husky fruit. All over the marsh 

 the redwings followed us, crying out at our 

 intrusion and driving out every hawk, eagle, 

 crow or heron that approached too near 

 their nesting places. All honor to the red- 

 winged blackbird. Were it not for the grand 

 fight he wages in protecting his own home 

 and at the same time.prqtecting all the nests 

 of the featherecbgame near-by, our shooting 

 days would go unrewarded with fair bags. 



On the flat shores and sloping banks that 

 edged the river's mouth and near-by lake 

 shore, in the old deserted meadows where 

 the beavers once built their dams, the plover 



