test and itchen—vegetation—riverside villages—the cottage by the river—itchen valley—blossoming limes—bird visitors—goldfinch—cirl bunting—song—plumage—three common river birds—coots—moor-hen and nest—little grebes' struggles—male grebe's devotion—parent coot's wisdom—a more or less happy family—dogged little grebes—grebes training their young—fishing birds and fascination.
there are no more refreshing places in hampshire, one might almost say in england, than the green level valleys of the test and itchen that wind, alternately widening and narrowing, through the downland country to southampton water. twin rivers they may be called, flowing at no great distance apart through the same kind of country, and closely alike in their general features: land and water intermixed—greenest water-meadows and crystal currents that divide and subdivide and join again, and again separate, forming many a miniature island and long slip of wet meadow with streams on either side. at all times refreshing to the sight and pleasant to dwell by, they are best
when it is summer and the green is deep.
greens of darkest bulrushes, tipped with bright brown panicles, growing in masses where the water is wide and shallowest; of grey-green graceful reeds and of tallest reed-mace with dark velvety brown {243} spikes; behind them all, bushes and trees—silvery-leafed willow and poplar, and dark alder, and old thorns and brambles in tangled masses; and always in the foreground lighter and brighter sedges, glaucous green flags, mixed with great hemp agrimony, with flesh-coloured, white-powdered flowers, and big-leafed comfrey, and scores of other water and moisture-loving plants.
through this vegetation, this infinite variety of refreshing greens and graceful forms, flow the rapid rivers, crystal-clear and cold from the white chalk, a most beautiful water, with floating water-grass in it—the fascinating poa fluviatilis which, rooted in the pebbly bed, looks like green loosened wind-blown hair swaying and trembling in the ever-crinkled, swift current.
test and itchen
they are not long rivers—the test and itchen—but long enough for men with unfevered blood in their veins to find sweet and peaceful homes on their margins. i think i know quite a dozen villages on the former stream, and fifteen or sixteen on the latter, in any one of which i could spend long years in perfect contentment. there are towns, too, ancient romsey and winchester, and modern hideous eastleigh; but the little centres are best to live in. these are, indeed, among the most characteristic hampshire villages; mostly small, with old thatched cottages, unlike, yet harmonising, irregularly placed along the roadside; each with its lowly walls set among gaily coloured flowers; the farm with its rural sounds and smells, its big horses and {244} milch-cows led and driven along the quiet streets; the small ancient church with its low, square tower, or grey shingled spire; and great trees standing singly or in groups or rows—oak and elm and ash; and often some ivy-grown relic of antiquity—ivy, indeed, everywhere. the charm of these villages that look as natural and one with the scene as chalk down and trees and green meadows, and have an air of immemorial quiet and a human life that is part of nature's life, unstrenuous, slow and sweet, has not yet been greatly disturbed. it is not here as in some parts of hampshire, and as it is pretty well everywhere in surrey, that most favoured county, the xanadu of the mighty ones of the money-market, where they oftenest decree their lordly pleasure-domes. those vast red-brick habitations of the kubla khans of the city which stare and glare at you from all openings in pine woods, across wide heaths and commons, and from hill-sides and hill-tops, produce the idea that they were turned out complete at some stupendous manufactory of houses at a distance, and sent out by the hundred to be set up wherever wanted, and where they are almost always utterly out of keeping with their surroundings, and consequently a blot on and a disfigurement of the landscape.
itchen valley
happily the downland slopes overlooking these green valleys have so far been neglected by the class of persons who live in mansions; for the time being they are ours, and by "ours" i mean all those who love and reverence this earth. but which of the two {245} is best i cannot say. one prefers the test and another the itchen, doubtless because in a matter of this kind the earth-lover will invariably prefer the spot he knows most intimately; and for this reason, much as i love the test, long as i would linger by it, i love the itchen more, having had a closer intimacy with it. i dare say that some of my friends, old wykehamists, who as boys caught their first trout close by the ancient sacred city and have kept up their acquaintance with its crystal currents, will laugh at me for writing as i do. but there are places, as there are faces, which draw the soul, and with which, in a little while, one becomes strangely intimate.
the first english cathedral i ever saw was that of winchester: that was a long time ago; it was then and on a few subsequent occasions that i had glimpses of the river that runs by it. they were like momentary sights of a beautiful face, caught in passing, of some person unknown. then it happened that in june 1900, cycling londonwards from beaulieu and the coast by lymington, i came to the valley, and to a village about half-way between winchester and alresford, on a visit to friends in their summer fishing retreat.
a riverside cottage
they had told me about their cottage, which serves them all the best purposes of a lodge in the vast wilderness. fortunately in this case the "boundless contiguity of shade" of the woods is some little distance away, on the other side of the ever green itchen valley, which, narrowing at this spot, is not much more than a couple of hundred yards wide. {246} a long field's length away from the cottage is the little ancient, rustic, tree-hidden village. the cottage, too, is pretty well hidden by trees, and has the reed- and sedge- and grass-green valley and swift river before it, and behind and on each side green fields and old untrimmed hedges with a few old oak trees growing both in the hedgerows and the fields. there is also an ancient avenue of limes which leads nowhere and whose origin is forgotten. the ground under the trees is overgrown with long grass and nettles and burdock; nobody comes or goes by it, it is only used by the cattle, the white and roan and strawberry shorthorns that graze in the fields and stand in the shade of the limes on very hot days. nor is there any way or path to the cottage; but one must go and come over the green fields, wet or dry. the avenue ends just at the point where the gently sloping chalk down touches the level valley, and the half-hidden, low-roofed cottage stands just there, with the shadow of the last two lime trees falling on it at one side. it was an ideal spot for a nature-lover and an angler to pitch his tent upon. here a small plot of ground, including the end of the lime-tree avenue, was marked out, a hedge of sweetbriar planted round it, the cottage erected, and a green lawn made before it on the river side, and beds of roses planted at the back.
nothing more—no gravel walks; no startling scarlet geraniums, no lobelias, no cinerarias, no calceolarias, nor other gardeners' abominations to hurt one's eyes and make one's head ache. and no dog, {247} nor cat, nor chick, nor child—only the wild birds to keep one company. they knew how to appreciate its shelter and solitariness; they were all about it, and built their nests amid the great green masses of ivy, honeysuckle, virginia creeper, rose, and wild clematis which covered the trellised walls and part of the red roof with a twelve years' luxuriant growth. to this delectable spot i returned on 21st july to see the changeful summer of 1900 out, my friends having gone north and left me their cottage for a habitation.
"there is the wind on the heath, brother," and one heartily agrees with the half-mythical petulengro that it is a very good thing; it had, indeed, been blowing off and on in my face for many months past; and from shadeless heaths and windy downs, and last of all, from the intolerable heat and dusty desolation of london in mid-july, it was a delightful change to this valley.
during the very hot days that followed it was pleasure enough to sit in the shade of the limes most of the day; there was coolness, silence, melody, fragrance; and, always before me, the sight of that moist green valley, which made one cool simply to look at it, and never wholly lost its novelty. the grass and herbage grow so luxuriantly in the water-meadows that the cows grazing there were half-hidden in their depth; and the green was tinged with the purple of seeding grasses, and red of dock and sorrel, and was everywhere splashed with creamy white of meadow-sweet. the channels of the swift {248} many-channelled river were fringed with the livelier green of sedges and reed-mace, and darkest green of bulrushes, and restful grey of reeds not yet in flower.
bird visitors
the old limes were now in their fullest bloom; and the hotter the day the greater the fragrance, the flower, unlike the woodbine and sweetbriar, needing no dew nor rain to bring out its deliciousness. to me, sitting there, it was at the same time a bath and atmosphere of sweetness, but it was very much more than that to all the honey-eating insects in the neighbourhood. their murmur was loud all day till dark, and from the lower branches that touched the grass with leaf and flower to their very tops the trees were peopled with tens and with hundreds of thousands of bees. where they all came from was a mystery; somewhere there should be a great harvest of honey and wax as a result of all this noise and activity. it was a soothing noise, according with an idle man's mood in the july weather; and it harmonised with, forming, so to speak, an appropriate background to, the various distinct and individual sounds of bird life.
the birds were many, and the tree under which i sat was their favourite resting-place; for not only was it the largest of the limes, but it was the last of the row, and overlooked the valley, so that when they flew across from the wood on the other side they mostly came to it. it was a very noble tree, eighteen feet in circumference near the ground; at about twenty feet from the root, the trunk divided into two central boles and several of lesser size, and {249} these all threw out long horizontal and drooping branches, the lowest of which feathered down to the grass. one sat as in a vast pavilion, and looked up to a height of sixty or seventy feet through wide spaces of shadow and green sunlight, and sunlit golden-green foliage and honey-coloured blossom, contrasting with brown branches and with masses of darkest mistletoe.
among the constant succession of bird visitors to the tree above me were the three pigeons—ring-dove, stock-dove, and turtle-dove; finches, tree-warblers, tits of four species, and the wren, tree-creeper, nuthatch, and many more. the best vocalists had ceased singing; the last nightingale i had heard utter its full song was in the oak woods of beaulieu on 27th june: and now all the tree-warblers, and with them chaffinch, thrush, blackbird, and robin, had become silent. the wren was the leading songster, beginning his bright music at four o'clock in the morning, and the others, still in song, that visited me were the greenfinch, goldfinch, swallow, dunnock, and cirl bunting. from my seat i could also hear the songs in the valley of the reed and sedge warblers, reed-bunting, and grasshopper-warbler. these, and the polyglot starling, and cooing and crooning doves, made the last days of july at this spot seem not the silent season we are accustomed to call it.
of these singers the goldfinch was the most pleasing. the bird that sang near me had assisted in rearing a brood in a nest on a low branch a few yards away, but {250} he still returned from the fields at intervals to sing; and seen, as i now saw him a dozen times a day, perched among the lime leaves and blossoms at the end of a slender bough, in his black and gold and crimson livery, he was by far the prettiest of my feathered visitors.
cirl bunting
but the cirl bunting, the inferior singer, interested me most, for i am somewhat partial to the buntings, and he is the best of them, and the one i knew least about from personal observation.
on my way hither at the end of june, somewhere between romsey and winchester, a cock cirl bunting in fine plumage flew up before me and perched on the wire of a roadside fence. it was a welcome encounter, and, alighting, i stood for some time watching him. i did not know that i was in a district where this pretty species is more numerous than in any other place in england—as common, in fact, as the universal yellowhammer, and commoner than the more local corn-bunting. here in july and august, in the course of an afternoon's walk, in any place where there are trees and grass fields, one can count on hearing half a dozen birds sing, every one of them probably the parent of a nestful of young. for this is the cirl bunting's pleasant habit. he assists in feeding and safeguarding the young, even as other songsters do who cease singing when this burden is laid upon them; but he is a bird of placid disposition, and takes his task more quietly than most; and, after returning from the fields with several grasshoppers in his throat and {251} beak and feeding his fledglings, he takes a rest, and at intervals in the day flies to his favourite tree, and repeats his blithe little song half a dozen times.
the song is not quite accurately described in the standard ornithological works as exactly like that of the yellowhammer, only without the thin, drawn-out note at the end, and therefore inferior—the little bit of bread, but without the cheese. it certainly resembles the yellowhammer's song, being a short note, a musical chirp, rapidly repeated several times. but the yellowhammer varies his song as to its time, the notes being sometimes fast and sometimes slow. the cirl's song is always the same in this respect, and is always a more rapid song than that of the other species. so rapid is it that, heard at a distance, it acquires almost the character of a long trill. in quality, too, it is the better song—clearer, brighter, brisker—and it carries farther; on still mornings i could hear one bird's song very distinctly at a distance of two hundred and fifty yards. the only good description of the cirl bunting's song—as well as the best general account of the bird's habits—which i have found, is in j. c. bellamy's natural history of south devon (plymouth and london), 1839, probably a forgotten book.
the best singer among the british buntings, he is also to my mind the prettiest bird. when he is described as black and brown, and lemon and sulphur-yellow, and olive and lavender-grey, and chestnut-red, we are apt to think that the effect of so many colours thrown upon his small body cannot be very {252} pleasing. but it is not so; these various colours are so harmoniously disposed, and have, in the lighter and brighter hues in the living bird, such a flower-like freshness and delicacy, that the effect is really charming.
when, in june, i first visited the cottage, my host took me into his dressing-room, and from it we watched a pair of cirl buntings bring food to their young in a nest in a small cypress standing just five yards from the window. the young birds were in the pinfeather stage, but they were unfortunately taken a very few days later by a rat, or stoat, or by that winged nest-robber the jackdaw, whose small cunning grey eyes are able to see into so many hidden things.
the birds themselves did not grieve overlong at their loss: the day after the nest was robbed the cock was heard singing—and he continued to sing every day from his favourite tree, an old black poplar growing outside the sweetbriar hedge in front of the cottage.
about this bird of a brave and cheerful disposition, more will have to be said in the next chapter. it is, or was, my desire to describe events in the valley at this changeful period from late july to october in the order of their occurrence, but in all the rest of the present chapter, which will be given to the river birds exclusively, the order must be broken.
water-birds
undoubtedly the three commonest water-birds inhabiting inland waters throughout england are {253} the coot, moor-hen, and dabchick, or little grebe; and on account of their abundance and general distribution they are almost as familiar as our domestic birds. yet one never grows tired of seeing and hearing them, as we do of noting the actions of other species that inhabit the same places; and the reason for this—a very odd reason it seems!—is because these three common birds, members of two orders which the modern scientific zoologist has set down among the lowest, and therefore, as he tells us, most stupid, of the feathered inhabitants of the globe, do actually exhibit a quicker intelligence and greater variety in their actions and habits than the species which are accounted their superiors.
the coot is not so abundant as the other two; also he is less varied in his colour, and less lively in his motions, and consequently attracts us less. the moor-hen is the most engaging, as well as the commonest—a bird concerning which more entertaining matter has been related in our natural histories than of any other native species. and i now saw a great deal of him, and of the other two as well. from the cottage windows, and from the lawn outside, one looked upon the main current of the river, and there were the birds always in sight; and when not looking one could hear them. without paying particular attention to them their presence in the river was a constant source of interest and amusement.
at one spot, where the stream made a slight bend, the floating water-weeds brought down by the current were always being caught by scattered bulrushes {254} growing a few feet from the edge; the arrested weeds formed a minute group of islets, and on these convenient little refuges and resting-places in the waterway, a dozen or more of the birds could be seen at most times. the old coots would stand on the floating weeds and preen and preen their plumage by the hour. they were like mermaids, for ever combing out their locks, and had the clear stream for a mirror. the dull-brown, white-breasted young coots, now fully grown, would meanwhile swim about picking up their own food. the moor-hens were with them, preening and feeding, and one had its nest there. it was a very big conspicuous nest, built up on a bunch of floating weeds, and formed, when the bird was sitting on its eggs, a pretty and curious object; for every day fresh bright-green sedge leaves were plucked and woven round it, and on that high bright-green nest, as on a throne, the bird sat, and when i went near the edge of the water, she (or he) would flirt her tail to display the snowy-white under-feathers, and nod her head, and stand up as if to display her pretty green legs, so as to let me see and admire all her colours; and finally, not being at all shy, she would settle quietly down again.
little grebes
the little grebes, too, had chosen that spot to build on. poor little grebes! how they worked and sat, and built and sat again, all the summer long. and all along the river it was the same thing—the grebes industriously making their nests, and trying ever so hard to hatch their eggs; and then at intervals of a few days the ruthless water-keeper would come by {255} with his long fatal pole to dash their hopes. for whenever he saw a suspicious-looking bunch of dead floating weeds which might be a grebe's nest, down would come the end of the pole on it, and the eggs would be spilt out of the wet bed, and rolled down by the swift water to the sea. and then the birds would cheerfully set to work again at the very same spot: but it was never easy to tell which bunch of wet weeds their eggs were hidden in. watching with a glass i could see the hen on her eggs, but if any person approached she would hastily pull the wet weeds from the edge over them, and slip into the water, diving and going away to some distance. while the female sat the male was always busy, diving and catching little fishes; he would dive down in one spot, and suddenly pop up a couple of yards away, right among the coots and moor-hens. this jack-in-the-box action on his part never upset their nerves. they took not the slightest notice of him, and were altogether a more or less, happy family, all very tolerant of each other's little eccentricities.
the little grebe fished for himself and for his sitting mate; he never seemed so happy and proud as when he was swimming to her, patiently sitting on her wet nest, with a little silvery fish in his beak. he also fished for old decaying weeds, which he fetched up from the bottom to add to the nest. whenever he popped up among or near the other birds with an old rag of a weed in his beak, one or two of the grown-up young coots would try to take it from him; and seeing them gaining on him he would dive down to {256} come up in another place, still clinging to the old rag half a yard long; and again the chase would be renewed, and again he would dive; until at last, after many narrow escapes and much strategy, the nest would be gained, and the sitting bird would take the weed from him and draw it up and tuck it round her, pleased with his devotedness, and at the sight of his triumph over the coots. as a rule, after giving her something—a little fish, or a wet weed to pull up and make herself comfortable with—they would join their voices in that long trilling cry of theirs, like a metallic, musical-sounding policeman's rattle.
it was not in a mere frolicsome spirit that the young coots hunted the dabchick with his weed, but rather, as i imagine, because the white succulent stems of aquatic plants growing deep in the water are their favourite food; they are accustomed to have it dived for by their parents and brought up to them, and they never appear to get enough to satisfy them; but when they are big, and their parents refuse to slave for them, they seem to want to make the little grebes their fishers for succulent stems.
one day in august 1899, i witnessed a pretty little bird-comedy at the pen ponds, in richmond park, which seemed to throw a strong light on the inner or domestic life of the coot. for a space of twenty minutes i watched an old coot industriously diving and bringing up the white parts of the stems of polygonum persicaria, which grows abundantly there, together with the rarer more beautiful lymnanthemum nympho?des, {257} which is called lymnanth for short. i prefer an english name for a british plant, an exceedingly attractive one in this case, and so beg leave to call it water-crocus. the old bird was attended by a full-grown young one, which she was feeding, and the unfailing diligence and quickness of the parent were as wonderful to see as the gluttonous disposition of its offspring. the old coot dived at least three times every minute, and each time came up with a clean white stem, the thickness of a stout clay pipe-stem, cut the proper length—about three to four inches. this the young bird would take and instantly swallow; but before it was well down his throat the old bird would be gone for another. i was with a friend, and we wondered when its devouring cormorant appetite would be appeased, and how its maw could contain so much food; we also compared it to a hungry italian greedily sucking down macaroni.
while this was going on a second young bird had been on the old nest on the little island in the lake, quietly dozing; and at length this one got off his dozing-place, and swam out to where the weed-fishing and feeding were in progress. as he came up, the old coot rose with a white stem in her beak, which the new-comer pushed forward to take; but the other thrust himself before him, and, snatching the stem from his parent's beak, swallowed it himself. the old coot remained perfectly motionless for a space of about four seconds, looking fixedly at the greedy one who had been gorging for twenty {258} minutes yet refused to give place to the other. then very suddenly, and with incredible fury, she dashed at and began hunting him over the pond. in vain he rose up and flew over the water, beating the surface with his feet, uttering cries of terror; in vain he dived; again and again she overtook and dealt him the most savage blows with her sharp beak, until, her anger thoroughly appeased and the punishment completed, she swam back to the second bird, waiting quietly at the same spot for her return, and began once more diving for white stems of the polygonum.
never again, we said, would the greedy young bird behave in the unmannerly way which had brought so terrible a castigation upon him! the coot is certainly a good mother who does not spoil her child by sparing the rod. and this is the bird which our comparative anatomists, after pulling it to pieces, tell us is a small-brained, unintelligent creature; and which old michael drayton, who, being a poet, ought to have known better, described as "a formal brainless ass"!
happy families
to come back to the itchen birds. the little group, or happy family, i have described was but one of the many groups of the same kind existing all along the river; and these separate groups, though at a distance from each other, and not exactly on visiting terms, each being jealous of its own stretch of water, yet kept up a sort of neighbourly intercourse in their own way. single cries were heard at all times from different points; but once or two or {259} three times in the day a cry of a coot or a moor-hen would be responded to by a bird at a distance; then another would take it up at a more distant point, and another still, until cries answering cries would be heard all along the stream. at such times the voice of the skulking water-rail would be audible too, but whether this excessively secretive bird had any social relations with the others beyond joining in the general greeting and outcry i could not discover. thus, all these separate little groups, composed of three different species, were like the members of one tribe or people broken up into families; and altogether it seemed that their lines had fallen to them in pleasant places, although it cannot be said that the placid current of their existence was never troubled.
i know not what happened to disturb them, but sometimes all at once cries were heard which were unmistakably emitted in anger, and sounds of splashing and struggling among the sedges and bulrushes; and the rushes would be swayed about this way and that, and birds would appear in hot pursuit of one another over the water; and then, just when one was in the midst of wondering what all this fury in their cooty breasts could be about, lo! it would all be over, and the little grebe would be busy catching his silvery fishes; and the moor-hen, pleased as ever at her own prettiness, nodding and prinking and flirting her feathers; and the coot, as usual, mermaid-like, combing out her slate-coloured tresses.
we have seen that of these three species the little {260} grebe was not so happy as the others, owing to his taste for little fishes being offensive to the fish-breeder and preserver. when i first saw how this river was watched over by the water-keepers, i came to the conclusion that very few or no dabchicks would succeed in hatching any young. and none were hatched until august, and then to my surprise i heard at one point the small, plaintive peep-peep of the young birds crying to be fed. one little grebe, more cunning or more fortunate than the others, had at last succeeded in bringing off her young; and once out of their shells they were safe. but by-and-by the little duckling-like sound was heard at another point, and then at another; and this continued in september, until, by the middle of that month, you could walk miles along the river, and before you left the sound of one little brood hungrily crying to be fed behind you, the little peep-peep of another brood would begin to be heard in advance of you.
often enough it is "dogged as does it" in bird as well as in human affairs, and never had birds more deserved to succeed than these dogged little grebes. i doubt if a single pair failed to bring out at least a couple of young by the end of september. and at that date you could see young birds apparently just out of the shell, while those that had been hatched in august were full grown.
fishing-lessons
about the habits of the little grebe, as about those of the moor-hen, many curious and entertaining things have been written; but what amused me most in these birds, when i watched them in late september {261} on the itchen, was the skilful way in which the parent bird taught her grown-up young ones to fish. at an early period the fishes given to the downy young are very small, and are always well bruised in the beak before the young bird is allowed to take it, however eager he may be to seize it. afterwards, when the young are more grown, the size of the fishes is increased, and they are less and less bruised, although always killed. finally, the young has to be taught to catch for himself; and at first he does not appear to have any aptitude for such a task, or any desire to acquire it. he is tormented with hunger, and all he knows is that his parent can catch fish for him, and his only desire is that she shall go on catching them as fast as he can swallow them. and she catches him a fish, and gives it to him, but, oh mockery! it was not really dead this time, and instantly falls into the water and is lost! not hopelessly lost, however, for down she goes like lightning, and comes up in ten seconds with it again. and he takes and drops it again, and looks stupid, and again she recovers and gives it to him. how many hundreds of times, i wonder, must this lesson be repeated before the young grebe finds out how to keep and to kill? yet that is after all only the beginning of his education. the main thing is that he must be taught to dive after the fishes he lets fall, and he appears to have no inclination, no intuitive impulse, to do such a thing. a small, quite dead fish must be given him carelessly, so that it shall fall, and he must be taught to pick up a {262} fallen morsel from the surface; but from that first simple act to the swift plunge and long chase after and capture of uninjured vigorous fishes, what an immense distance there is! it is, however, probable that, after the first reluctance of the young bird has been overcome, and a habit of diving after escaped fishes acquired, he makes exceedingly rapid progress.
but, even after the completion of his education, when he is independent of his parents, and quick and sure as they at capturing fishes down in their own dim element, is it not still a puzzle and a mystery that such a thing can be done? and here i speak not only of the little grebe, but of all birds that dive after fishes, and pursue and capture them in fresh or salt water. we see how a kingfisher takes his prey, or a tern, or gannet, or osprey, by dropping upon it when it swims near the surface; he takes his fish by surprise, as a sparrow-hawk takes the bird he preys upon. but no specialisation can make an air-breathing, feathered bird an equal of the fish under water. one can see at a glance in any clear stream that any fish can out-distance any bird, darting off with the least effort so swiftly as almost to elude the sight, while the fastest bird under water moves but little faster than a water-rat.
fascination
the explanation, i believe, is that the paralysing effect on many small, persecuted creatures in the presence of, or when pursued by, their natural enemies and devourers, is as common under as above the water. i have distinctly seen this when watching fish-eating birds being fed at the zoological {263} gardens in glass tanks. the appearance of the bird when he dives strikes an instant terror into them; and it may then be seen that those which endeavour to escape are no longer in possession of their full powers, and their efforts to fly from the enemy are like those of the mouse and vole when a weasel is on their track, or of a frog when pursued by a snake; while others remain suspended in the water, quite motionless, until seized and swallowed.
