36 GOONDI CHAP. 
and the temptation to go after them, despite the 
steaming heat, was so great that I went outside ; then 
a blue and red one danced in front of me, but though 
it was tantalising to let them go, such a vapour bath 
was beyond endurance, and I handed my net over 
to a small black boy, who, instead of butterflies, 
brought me a fat green grasshopper, well squashed in 
his moist little hands ! Under the shade of the trees 
on the river-bank a boat was fastened. Here the 
rippling of the water sounded at least cooler, and a 
blue and white kingfisher seated on the end of a log 
was just what I wanted to sketch ; his mate on her 
nest in a hollow of the tree above I found later on, 
and he sat and guarded her, occasionally darting across 
or into the water after some dainty morsel of food. 
Under the shadow of the large Caladium leaves, 
gliding in and out among the stems, fish went by, 
pressing their noses along them in quest of food, and 
snapping here and there at a stray fly or water-beetle. 
A snail, with a thin transparent shell, crept from under 
a leaf, and, quick as thought, a great green frog 
swallowed it, — these snails are in great request; I 
have often watched the water-fowls turning over the 
leaves looking for them, — a pink and green fruit-eating 
pigeon cooed in the tree above me as he sent a 
shower of small yellow figs into the boat, sweet but 
tasteless to eat. A water -wagtail danced in the air 
after a dragonfly, and I heard the twitter of young 
birds as she came back to them with her winged meal. 
I sat so still in my resting-place that after a time she 
almost touched me with her wings, and in her nest 
close beside me I could count the five featherless necks 
of her nestlings as they feebly craned them up and 
gaped for food. A woodpecker climbed up the trunk 
of the tree, tapping here and there for a likely sound 
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