rogs. Whatever his position was, both feet down or
one foot raised for a stride, when the fish appeared, he never changed
it, knowing well that motion would only send his game hurriedly into
deeper water. He would stand sometimes for a half hour on one leg,
letting his head sink slowly down on his shoulders, his neck curled
back, his long sharp bill pointing always straight at the quivering line
which marked the playing fish, his eyes half closed till the right
moment came. Then you would see his long neck shoot down, hear the
splash and, later, the whack of his catch against the nearest root, to
kill it; and watch with curious feelings of sympathy as he hid it in the
grass and covered it over, lest Hawahak the hawk should see, or Cheokhes
the mink smell it, and rob him while he fished.

If he were near his last catch, he would stride back and hide the two
together; if not, he covered it over in the nearest good place and went
on. No danger of his ever forgetting, however numerous the catch!
Whether he counts his frogs and fish, or simply remembers the different
hiding places, I have no means of knowing.

Sometimes, when I surprised him on a muddy shore and he flew away
without taking even one of his tidbits, I would follow his back track
and uncover his hiding places to see what he had caught. Frogs, fish,
pollywogs, mussels, a baby muskrat,--they were all there, each hidden
cunningly under a bit of dried grass and mud. And once I went away and
hid on the opposite shore to see if he would come back. After an hour or
more he appeared, looking first at my tracks, then at all the shore with
greater keenness than usual; then he went straight to three different
hiding places that I had found, and two more that I had not seen, and
flew away to his nest, a fringe of frogs and fish hanging at either side
of his long bill as he went.

He had arranged them on the ground like the spokes of a wheel, as a fox
does, heads all out on either side, and one leg or the tail of each
crossed in a common pile in the middle; so that he could bite down over
the crossed members and carry the greatest number of little frogs and
fish with the least likelihood of dropping any in his flight.

The mussels which he found were invariably, I think, eaten as his own
particular tidbits; for I never saw him attempt to carry them away,
though once I found two or three where he had hidden them. Generally he
could crack their shells easily by blows of hi