As we row on down the lake, watching the reflection of the boat rocking in the ripples, and the reflections of the hills and the trees on the shore of the lake we sometimes hear a long whistling cry, and a curlew swings high over our heads from one side of the valley to the other, like a pendulum-bob without a string, his long curved beak stretched out far before him. And sometimes when the weather is going to be stormy we hear a shrill shriek repeated again and again, and see a white cloud of seagulls lift from the marshy shores and flap away and back and settle again. And more than once we have seen wild duck, and a drake in a gorgeous shimmer of colour fly across the marshland by the head of the river. Half-way down the lake there is a little rocky island, where we have often seen the yellow wagtails, and on a promontory opposite a kingfisher has his nest in a deep hole in the rock. We row the boat close up to the nest, and look at the pile of fishbones outside the hole. The Kingfisher is a fisher as well as a king, and lives on the fish that he catches. It is fine to see him fly across in the sunlight from the rock to island, from the island to the rock, "Just like a rainbow without any rain," as the Elf says, for he is the most gaily coloured of the birds. "Because he is the king," says the Imp. And indeed his kingly robes are very splendid--blue, and green, and red, and white, and orange--as fine a cloak for a monarch as you could wish to see. There is another fishing bird whom we are always glad to see. He is bigger than I do not know how many Kingfishers put together, and though he is not brightly coloured he is very beautiful. He is a heron, and herons are like the storks of Hans Andersen's fairy stories. He is a grey bird, tall and thin, with a black crest lying back from the top of his head. His legs are long, and he is fond of standing on one leg by the edge of the water, or on a stone at the end of some little promontory, tucking the other leg up in the air, and watching the water with his head on one side, ready at any moment to dive his long beak into the lake and snatch a little fish out of it. When he flies he crooks his long neck back on his shoulders and hangs his legs straight out behind, so that it is impossible not to know him when you see him. In the little harbour, where our boat is kept, there are often so many minnows that when we look into the water it seems as if the bottom were made of moving tiny fish. People who are going to fish for perch often catch the minnows dozens at a time in nets in their boathouses, when the water is shallow, and the minnows swim up into the shadows of the boats. And there are caddises there too, if we choose the right places to look for them.