months free, happy Lutra made her daytime abode in a "holt"
among the alder-roots fringing this pool. She loved in the long winter
nights to hear the winnow-winnow of powerful wings as the wild ducks
circled down towards the pool, the whir of the grey lag-geese far in the
mysterious sky, and the whistle of the teal and the gurgle of the
moorhens among the weeds close by the river's brim.

Crouched on a grassy mound beside the rapids, she could see each
movement on the surface of the pool. The wild ducks splattered and
quacked as they paddled busily hither and thither, visiting each little
bay and reed-clump at the water's edge. Sometimes, surrendering
themselves wholly to sport and play, they formed little groups of two or
three; and now one group, and then another, would race, half-swimming,
half-flying, from bank to bank or from the rock to the salmon "hover" at
the lower end of the pool. The otter remembered her experience with the
dabchick, and believed that to capture a full-grown duck would tax her
utmost strength and cause a general alarm. Once, however, excited by the
wild ducks' sport, she slipped quietly from the mound, dived deep, and
from the river-bed shot up in the midst of the birds just as they had
congregated to settle a point of difference in a recent event, and to
discuss a second part of their sports' programme for the night.

As the birds, panic-stricken, scattered on every side, and, following
each other in two long lines that joined in the form of a wedge, flew up
into the starlit sky, Lutra watched them eagerly for a few moments;
then, without a ripple, she sank below the surface and returned to her
watch on the mound. For a while after the ducks had left the pool,
nothing could be heard but the ceaseless noise of falling water. But as
the night drew on, a moorhen ventured from the shelter of the alders,
and, like a tiny, buoyant boat, launched out into the pool. The otter,
with appetite whetted by recent sport among the ducks, again left her
hiding place and silently vanished into the stream. Borne by the
current, she reached, with scarcely an effort, a point in the swirling
depths from which she could catch a glimpse of the dim outline of the
floating bird. Then, rising swiftly, she gripped the moorhen from
beneath, dived across to the "hover," and, having killed and skinned her
prey, feasted at leisure.

There were times in the second summer of her existence when Lutra, like
the wild ducks,