I lay on a bank shaded by a tall willow, in the top of which remains the nest belonging to a pair of crows,from which I shot, last spring, five old birds.
From this vantage point, I was just within shooting range of the centre of a pond and its islands of brown rushes. I was able, through my telescope, to watch a small, shrinking sheet of floodwater half a mile away on and about which were a score of so of swans, 50 mallard and one nice lot of wigeon. On the grass margins ran many green plover and among these hopped small, black rugs of starlings.
The grass of the bank on which
