bill, were deftly gathered in and swallowed – an unsubstantial morsel, but not to be ignored when one is blest with a bittern's appetite.
After a few minutes more of statuesque deliberation, having detected nothing in the landscape particularly demanding his attention, the bittern lazily lifted his broad wings and flapped in slow flight, his long legs almost brushing the sedge-tops, back to the post of vantage where he had captured the chub. As soon as he alighted he stiffened himself erect, and stared about as if to see whether his flight had been noticed. Then, presently, he seemed to remember something of importance. This was the season of mating joys and cares. It was time he signalled his brown mate. First he began snapping his bill sharply, and then he went through a number of contortions with his throat and neck, as if he were trying to gulp down vast quantities of air, and finding the effort most difficult. At length, however, the painful-looking struggle was crowned with achievement. Once more, as on the preceding evening, that great call boomed forth across the swamp, sonorous yet strangulated, uncouth yet thrilling and haunting, the very voice of solitude and mystery: — Klunk-er-glungk – Klunk-er-glungk – Klunk-er-glungk.
Almost immediately came an acknowledgement of this untuneful love-song – a single hoarse quaw-awk; and another snaky brown head and yellow dagger bill were raised above the tops of the sedges. The hen bittern, in response to her mate's cry, had just come off her nest.
For some tranquil moments the two eyed each other without stirring, and it almost seemed as if their very immobility was a mode of expression, a secret code for communication between them. The result, if so, appeared to be satisfactory. The hen came stalking solemnly through the grass and sedges towards the water's edge, only pausing on the way to transfix and gulp down a luckless frog. And the stately male, once more spreading his spacious vans, flapped slowly over and dropped again into the grass some ten or a dozen feet from the nest.
The nest was a rather casual structure of dry grass and weeds, in a hollow of the turf, and more or less concealed by leaning tufts of swamp-grass. It contained three large eggs of a dull greenish buff, clouded with darker tones, and blending elusively with the soft colourings of the nest. These precious eggs the male bittern had no intention of brooding. His object was merely to stand guard over them, with jealous vigilance, while his mate was away foraging. The sun was softly warm upon them, through the thin shadows of the grass blades, and he knew they would not chill during her brief absence. He took his post just near enough to keep his eye upon the nest, without unduly drawing attention to its hiding-place.
This patch of water-meadow, perhaps a half-acre in extent, on which the bitterns had their nest, was one of many such tiny islands scattered amid the interlacing channels of Lost-Water Swamp. It formed a congenial refuge for all that small life of the wilderness which loves to be near water without being in it. It was particularly beloved of the meadow-mice, because the surrounding watercourses and morasses were an effectual barrier to some of their worst enemies, such as foxes, skunks, and weasels; and they throve here amazingly. To be sure the bittern would take toll of them when they came his way, but he did not deliberately hunt them, rather preferring a diet of frogs and fish; and moreover, his depredations upon the mice were more than counterbalanced by his eager hostility to their dreaded foes, the snakes. So, on the whole, he might have been regarded by the mouse community as a benefactor, though a rather costly one.
Even now, as he stood there apparently thinking of nothing but his guardianship of the nest, he gave a telling example of his beneficence in this regard. There was a tiny, frightened squeak, a desperate small rustling in the grass-stems, and a terrified mouse scurried by, with a two-foot black snake at its tail. The bittern's head flashed down, unerringly, and rose again, more slowly, with the snake gripped by the middle. Held high in air, as if on exhibition, between the knife-edge tips of that deadly yellow bill, the victim writhed and twisted, coiling itself convulsively around its captor's head and neck. But with two or three sharp jerks it was drawn further back, towards the base of the mandibles, and then, with an inexorable pressure, bitten clean in two, the halves uncoiled and fell to the ground, still wriggling spasmodically. With grave deliberation the bittern planted one foot upon the head half, and demolished the vicious head with a tap of his bill. This done, he swallowed it, with determined and strenuous gulpings. Then he eyed the other half doubtfully, and decided that he was not yet ready for it. So, placing one foot upon it with a precise air, as if in assertion of ownership, he lifted his head again and resumed his motionless guarding of the nest. If any mice were watching – and their beady bright eyes are always watching – they may well have congratulated themselves that the pair of bitterns had chosen this particular island for their nesting-place.
A little later in the morning – perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes after the incident of the snake – the mice found yet another potent reason for congratulating themselves on the presence of their expensive champion. The hen bittern, apparently, had not been very successful in her foraging. She had shown as yet no sign of returning to the nest. The male was just beginning to get impatient. He even went so far as to move his head, though ever so slightly. Indeed, he was on the very point of beginning those grotesque snappings of the bill and gulpings of air, which would be followed by his booming triple call, when he caught sight of a dark form moving through the grass, beyond the nest. Instantly he stiffened again into rigidity. Only, very slowly, the long slender feathers which crowned his head and lay along his neck began to rise.
The dark form, gliding stealthily among the grasses, was that of an animal about two feet in length, low on the legs, slender, sinuous, quick-darting. The bittern had never chanced to observe a mink before, but he needed no one to tell him that this creature was dangerous. Ferocity and efficiency were written all over the savage, triangular head, and lithe, swift body. But the intruder had evidently not yet discovered the precious nest. He was half a dozen paces away from it, and not moving directly towards it. He seemed quite otherwise occupied. Indeed, in the very next moment he pounced upon a mouse, which he tore and devoured with an eagerness which showed him to be hungry. The bittern, being blest with prudence and self-control, made no move to meet trouble half-way. He waited, and hoped anxiously that the treasure of the nest might escape discovery.
The mink, to do that sanguinary marauder justice, was not at the moment thinking of any such luxury as eggs. A restless and far-ranging slayer, and almost as much at home in the water as on dry land, he had entered the swamp in the hope of finding just such a happy hunting ground as this bit of mouse-thronged meadow. He had just arrived, after much swimming of sluggish channels, scrambling over slimy roots, and picking a fastidious way about dark pools of treacherous ooze, and he was now full of blood-thirsty excitement over the success of his adventure. His acute ears and supersensitive nostrils had already assured him that the meadow was simply swarming with mice. His nose sniffed greedily the subtle, warm mousy smells. His ears detected the innumerable, elusive mousy squeaks and rustlings. His eyes, lit now with the red spark of the blood-lust, were less fortunate than his ears and nose, because word of a new and dreadful foe had gone abroad among the mouse-folk, and concealment was the order of the day. But already, he had made one kill – and that so easily that he knew the quarry here was not much hunted. He felt that, at last, he could afford to take life easily and do his hunting at leisure.
He licked his lips, gave his long whiskers a brush with his fore-paws, to cleanse them after his rather hasty and untidy meal, and was just preparing to follow a very distinct mouse trail which lay alluringly before his nose, when a chance puff of air, drawing softly across the grass, bore him a scent which instantly caught his attention. The scent of bittern was new to him, as it chanced. He knew it for the scent of a bird, a water-bird of some kind, – probably, from its abundance, a large bird, and certainly, therefore, a bird worth his hunting. That the hunting might have any possible perils for himself was far from occurring to his savage and audacious spirit.
Curious and inquiring, he rose straight up en his hind-quarters in order to get a good view, and peered searchingly over the grass-tops. He saw nothing but the green and sun-steeped meadow with the red-and-black butterflies wavering over it, the gleam of the unruffled water, and the osier-thickets beyond, their leafage astir with blackbirds and swamp-sparrows. He looked
