United States or Sweden ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I never tire of watching how the lonely white heron spears his scaly prey, how the clapper-rail floats on his raft of matted rushes, how the marsh-wren jerks his saucy little tail over his bottle-shaped nest, or how with quick and certain stroke the oyster-catcher extracts the juicy "native" from his bivalved citadel.
I had waded out into the meadow perhaps two hundred yards, leaving a dark bruised trail in the grass, when I came upon a nest of the long-billed marsh-wren. It was a bulky house, and so overburdened its frail sedge supports that it lay almost upon the ground, with its little round doorway wide open to the sun and rain. They must have been a young couple who built it, and quite inexperienced.
As a rule, I have never been able to help much in such extremities. Either I arrive too late, or else I blunder. I thought, for a moment, that it was the nest of the long-billed's cousin, the short-billed marsh-wren, that I had found which would have been a gem indeed, with pearly eggs instead of chocolate ones.
Arms bared to the shoulder, we reached deep beneath the surface to bring up the long-stemmed water-lilies the great white blossoms, and the queer little yellow-and-black ones. Like a blight-eyed sprite the tiny marsh-wren flitted among the rushes, and the musk-rat built strange reed-castles at the water's edge.
Word Of The Day