slime, lie decaying in sun-flecked pools, while the underbrush is
almost impenetrable.

The swamp resembles a big dining-table for the birds. Wild grape-vines
clamber to the tops of the highest trees, spreading umbrella-wise over
the branches, and their festooned floating trailers wave as silken
fringe in the play of the wind. The birds loll in the shade, peel
bark, gather dried curlers for nest material, and feast on the pungent
fruit. They chatter in swarms over the wild-cherry trees, and overload
their crops with red haws, wild plums, papaws, blackberries and
mandrake. The alders around the edge draw flocks in search of berries,
and the marsh grasses and weeds are weighted with seed hunters. The
muck is alive with worms; and the whole swamp ablaze with flowers,
whose colours and perfumes attract myriads of insects and butterflies.

Wild creepers flaunt their red and gold from the treetops, and the
bumblebees and humming-birds make common cause in rifling the
honey-laden trumpets. The air around the wild-plum and redhaw trees is
vibrant with the beating wings of millions of wild bees, and the
bee-birds feast to gluttony. The fetid odours of the swamp draw
insects in swarms, and fly-catchers tumble and twist in air in pursuit
of them.

Every hollow tree homes its colony of bats. Snakes sun on the bushes.
The water folk leave trails of shining ripples in their wake as they
cross the lagoons. Turtles waddle clumsily from the logs. Frogs take
graceful leaps from pool to pool. Everything native to that section of
the country-underground, creeping, or a-wing--can be found in the
Limberlost; but above all the birds.

Dainty green warblers nest in its tree-tops, and red-eyed vireos choose
a location below. It is the home of bell-birds, finches, and thrushes.
There are flocks of blackbirds, grackles, and crows. Jays and catbirds
quarrel constantly, and marsh-wrens keep up never-ending chatter.
Orioles swing their pendent purses from the branches, and with the
tanagers picnic on mulberries and insects. In the evening, night-hawks
dart on silent wing; whippoorwills set up a plaintive cry that they
continue far into the night; and owls revel in moonlight and rich
hunting. At dawn, robins wake the echoes of each new day with the
admonition, "Cheer up! Cheer up!" and a little later big black vultures
go wheeling through cloudland or hang there, like frozen splashes,
searching the Limberlost and the surrounding c