■ The noise of the water is overpowering. A slip into this boiling rage would mean quick death. Looking 10 meters across the dim, mist-slippery, water-scoured canyon, I see a young water ouzel peering out of its unique nest, on the lookout for its parents. Clouds of spray keep the nest of living moss continually wet; but this bird is waterproofed with an oily plumage and keeps its vigil at the nest opening. Peering into the torrent below, then upstream and downstream, it awaits patiently the delivery of the next meal. With the approach of one of the adults, three other heads crowd the opening, begging yellow mouths agape. Flying low, the ouzel parent zeros through the heavy spray, alighting on a slippery boulder below the nest ledge. Preparing to fly up to the nest with its load of insect larvae, the ouzel spots me across the water. At its sharp _jigic, jigic_ alarm, the bills of the young snap instantly shut. Nervously the bird regards my close presence, dipping its entire body rapidly up and down, as if keeping time with the surging torrent. Discovering no danger, the dusky blue-grey bird bobs more slowly. The other adult, returning from an upstream forage, alights on the same rock, occasioning a new outcry from the fledglings. Each in turn, the parent birds fly up to feed their young, beating their wings to maintain their position at the perchless nest. Not pausing to regard me further, they split the stream between them again, one flying upstream and one down, to continue the hunt. Blinking and shaking the collected mist from its bill, the single young sentry renews its watch. In Shallow Waters Life abounds in the shallow lakes and ponds. Calm, protected John’s Lake offers a fine example of how a complex aquatic plant-and-animal community can exist in balance in a confined space. The water teems with the microscopic algae, protozoans, and rotifers that sustain the barely visible zooplankton. Dancing, flitting, hopping, and swaying through the water, these zooplankton in turn support the larger plankton-eating animals. Dragonflies and damselflies shoot past, crackling their wings, and perch in the bog grass. Looking into the shallow water, you will see a wealth of small animal life. A spotted frog swims into view, floating to the surface beside a lily pad so that its eyes protrude above the water. The ribbonlike form of a leech swims across the bottom toward deeper water. Looking closer, you see that the water swarms with bizarre shapes—water boatmen propelling themselves with oarlike appendages, a gliding mayfly nymph, then a predacious diving beetle surfacing, grasping a bubble of air beneath its shiny brown wing plates and disappearing downward again—the bubble’s edge shining silver—into the brown bottom debris. Suddenly a whirligig beetle sets the surface to spinning, wrinkling the view below.