In these moss huts three or four eggs are laid, white like foam-bubbles;
and well may the little birds hatched from them sing water songs, for
they hear them all their lives, and even before they are born.
I have often observed the young just out of the nest making their odd
gestures, and seeming in every way as much at home as their experienced
parents, like young bees on their first excursions to the flower fields.
No amount of familiarity with people and their ways seems to change them
in the least. To all appearance their behavior is just the same on
seeing a man for the first time, as when they have seen him frequently.
[Illustration: THE OUZEL AT HOME.]
On the lower reaches of the rivers where mills are built, they sing on
through the din of the machinery, and all the noisy confusion of dogs,
cattle, and workmen. On one occasion, while a wood-chopper was at work
on the river-bank, I observed one cheerily singing within reach of the
flying chips. Nor does any kind of unwonted disturbance put him in bad
humor, or frighten him out of calm self-possession. In passing through a
narrow gorge, I once drove one ahead of me from rapid to rapid,
disturbing him four times in quick succession where he could not very
well fly past me on account of the narrowness of the channel.
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