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It was a big fellow, he said, one of three big ones that inhabited the creek. He would get him this time. "Are you sure?" I asked. "Oh yes, I'll blow the top of his head off." He was loaded for gallinules, and I, being no sportsman, and never having seen an alligator before, was some shades less confident. But it was his game, and I left him to his way.

Thus, the streams are fished by herons, grebes, and kingfishers, while the rushy margins are worked by coots and gallinules, and, above the surface, reed and sedge-warblers, with other kinds, inhabit the reed-beds.

Out of the dense vegetation of a swamp came the cries of Florida gallinules, and then, of a sudden, I caught, or seemed to catch, the sweet kurwee whistle of a Carolina rail. Instinctively I turned my ear for its repetition, and by so doing admitted to myself that I was not certain of what I had heard, although the sora's call is familiar, and the bird was reasonably near.

In late September I spread my observation chair at the very edge of one of the dark tarns and watched the life on the leaves. Out at the center a fussy jacana was feeding with her two spindly-legged babies, while, still nearer, three scarlet-helmeted gallinules lumbered about, now and then tipping over a silvery and black infant which seemed puzzled as to which it should call parent.

It was worth while to hear the poultry cries of the gallinules if nothing more; and often several of the birds would be seen swimming about among the big white lilies and the green tussocks. Once I discovered one of them sitting upright on a stake, a precarious seat, off which he soon tumbled awkwardly into the water. At another time, on the same stake, sat some dark, strange-looking object.

And the ruddy geese, and the gallinules and the ducks and the karandavas and the plavas and the parrots and the male kokilas and the herons in confusion flew in all directions, while some proud elephants urged by their mates, as also some lions and elephants in rage, flew at Bhimasena.

With this foundation of vegetation recall that the Demerara coast is a paradise for herons, egrets, bitterns, gallinules, jacanas, and hawks, and think of these trees and foliage, islands and marsh, as a nesting and roosting focus for hundreds of such birds. Thus, considering the gardens indirectly, one comes gradually to the realization of their wonderful character.

A fork-tailed kite! and purple gallinules were for the time forgotten. It was performing the most graceful evolutions, swooping half-way to the earth from a great height, and then sweeping upward again. Another minute, and I saw a second bird, farther away.

With them were gallinules and small green herons, and across the pink mist of lotos blossoms just beyond, three egrets drew three lines of purest white and vanished. It was not at all real, this onrush of bird and blossom revealed by the temporary erasing of the driven lines of gray rain. Like a spendthrift in the midst of a winning game, I still watched eagerly and ungratefully for manatees.

A dainty thing to look at is that smooth, olive-brown little moor-hen, going about with such freedom and ease in its small dominion, lifting its green legs deliberately, turning its yellow beak and shield this way and that, and displaying the snow-white undertail at every step, as it moves with that quaint, graceful, jetting gait peculiar to the gallinules.