on snags and sticks projecting from the soft sloping mud exposed along the banks at low tide. An inch above that mud innumerable winged insects darted and danced, and on these the kingbirds fed. Barn swallows, also, skimming with infinite grace back and forth above the marginal mud flats, preyed on these insect hosts, and never a wing of a swallow touched the mud. But the kingbirds, swooping down from their sticks and snags, often patted the mud with their wings. That mud was like oily glue. Little wings that patted it were sometimes held fast by it, and many kingbirds were thus trapped. Once they fell upon the mud, it incased them all over, clogging their feathers, rendering them incapable of flight.
Close to the edge of the water the young gator found a panting kingbird lying helpless. He swallowed the bird; then, slipping back into the water, he resumed his sun bath, lying six feet or so from the shore, only his eyes and nostrils showing above the surface. Soon he saw another kingbird touch the mud with its wing, flutter wildly, then lie still. This bird, too, he caught; and thenceforward for a week, while the kingbird migration was at its height, he found it profitable to lie in wait by the muddy margins at low tide. Late one afternoon, however, when the sun was sinking through crimson-dyed skies toward the distant purple woods beyond the
