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She watched the wagtails strut magisterially, the moorhens with the worried air of overworked charwomen, all the mysterious evening life of a summer pool, but she had no smile for them to-day. The swallows slid and circled across the water; their silence was no longer intimate, but alien. She looked across at Undern.
I marked one down on the opposite bank, and could see it crawling beneath some sticks; but the old bird kept swimming past the spot, and appeared to neither hear nor see the little ball of fur. Perhaps he was playing cunning; he may have imagined that the bird was invisible to me, and was trying to divert my attention from the spot. Moorhens are always interesting to watch.
Coots and moorhens dived and hid in the reeds. The lesser grebe sank at the sound of the paddle like a stone. A strong northern diver raised a wave as he hurried away under the water, his course marked by the undulation above him. Sedge-birds chirped in the willows; black-headed buntings sat on the trees, and watched him without fear.
But the Rat kindly looked in another direction, and presently the Mole's spirits revived again, and he was even able to give some straight back-talk to a couple of moorhens who were sniggering to each other about his bedraggled appearance.
You must push through the reed grass to find the sword-flags; the stout willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but resist the foot like underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little black moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother, who has dived under the water-grass, and broken the smooth surface of the duckweed.
On the stream banks moorhens walked with jerky confident steps, in the easy boldness of those who had a couple of other elements at their disposal in an emergency; more timorous partridges raced away from the apparition of the train, looking all leg and neck, like little forest elves fleeing from human encounter.
A curiously mixed group assembles on the lawn each morning at eight o'clock in the winter. First of all there are the pheasants crowing loudly for their breakfast, then come the stately swans, several pinioned wild ducks, tame pigeons and wild and timid stock doves, four or five moorhens, any number of daws, as well as thrushes, blackbirds, starlings, house-sparrows, and finches.
To the right was a mill, with a great pond thick with bulrushes and water-lilies, full of water-birds, coots and moorhens, which swam about, uttering plaintive cries.
Mallard, teal, dabchicks, and moorhens breed there regularly, and in hard weather a number of rarer birds drop in. Snipe are often seen by one of the shallower ponds, and occasionally such divers as goosanders appear and give an exhibition of fish-catching. These, like the tufted ducks and grebes, are entirely self-supporting.
The broad shallow reach of the Coln in front of the manor house seems to be a favourite hunting-ground of the otter during his nocturnal rambles; for sometimes one is awakened at night by a tremendous tumult among the wild duck and moorhens that haunt the pool. They rush up and down, screaming and flapping their wings as if they were "daft."
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