dove headlong into the mud, leaving a long, crinkly, brown trail to tell
exactly how far he had gone.

A frog is like an ostrich. When he sees nothing, because his head is
hidden, he thinks nothing can see him. At the sudden alarm Mother Quoskh
would stretch her neck, watching the frog's flight; then turn her head
so that her long bill pointed directly at the bump on the muddy bottom,
which marked the hiding place of Chigwooltz, and croak softly as a
signal. At the sound one of the young herons would hurry forward
eagerly; follow his mother's bill, which remained motionless, pointing
all the while; twist his head till he saw the frog's back in the mud,
and then lunge at it like lightning. Generally he got his frog, and
through your glass you would see the unfortunate creature wriggling and
kicking his way into Quoskh's yellow beak. If the lunge missed, the
mother's keen eye followed the frog's frantic rush through the mud, with
a longer trail this time behind him, till he hid again; whereupon she
croaked the same youngster up for another try, and then the whole family
moved jerkily along, like a row of boys on stilts, to the next clump of
lily pads.

As the young grew older and stronger on their legs, I noticed the
rudiments, at least, of a curious habit of dancing, which seems to
belong to most of our long-legged wading birds. Sometimes, sitting
quietly in my canoe, I would see the young birds sail down in a long
slant to the shore. Immediately on alighting, before they gave any
thought to frogs or fish or carnal appetite, they would hop up and down,
balancing, swaying, spreading their wings, and hopping again round about
each other, as if bewitched. A few moments of this crazy performance,
and then they would stalk sedately along the shore, as if ashamed of
their ungainly levity; but at any moment the ecstasy might seize them
and they would hop again, as if they simply could not help it. This
occurred generally towards evening, when the birds had fed full and
were ready for play or for stretching their broad wings in preparation
for the long autumn flight.

Watching them, one evening, I remembered suddenly a curious scene that I
had stumbled upon when a boy. I had seen a great blue heron sail
croaking, croaking, into an arm of the big pond where I was catching
bullpouts, and crept down through dense woods to find out what he was
croaking about. Instead of one, I found eight or ten of the great birds
on an open shor