long tail touching the moss curtain behind him, he was wondering what luck attended his mate who was away fishing while, like a good husband, he took his turn at the monotonous business of warming the four blue-white eggs.
It was a monotonous task in one sense only. The anhinga's tree stood close to an opening in the flooded cypress woods, and across and above this opening herons and snakebirds were constantly flying. Most of the young birds in the heron nests were well grown, and these young herons required an enormous quantity of food. They stood on the nests or on branches close by, and when they saw, or thought they saw, a parent heron returning from the fishing grounds they gaped open their bills, flapped their wings, and made an amazing clamor of squawks, croaks and quacks.
There were times when every heron family in the town seemed to join in the din, to which the adult herons often added their deeper, hoarser voices, so that the whole place rang with an extraordinary variety of noises. In these, with scarcely any effort of the imagination, one might distinguish the barking of dogs, the squealing and grunting of pigs, the squawling of cats, the piercing cries of guinea-fowls and even the roaring of wild beasts. The anhinga was entirely accustomed to this clamor and was not in the slightest degree annoyed by it, though he
