Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/49

Rh bird was too wary for me; and a miss is as good as a mile. No doubt I shall die without the sight.

So the Carolina rail will whistle and the Virginia rail call the pigs, but it will be a memorable hour when you detect either of them in the act. You will hear the sounds often enough; I hear them to-day; and much less frequently you will see the birds stepping with dainty caution along a favorite runway, or feeding about the edges of their cover. But to see them utter the familiar notes, that is another story.

This morning I see on the wing a night heron (so I call him, without professing absolute certainty), a bittern (flying from one side of the railroad tracks to the other), and a little green heron, but no rail of either species, although I sit still in favorable places—where at other times I have seen them—with exemplary patience. In hunting of this kind, patience must be mixed with luck. It pleases my imagination to think what numbers of birds there are all about me, each busy with its day's work, and not one of them visible for an instant, even by chance.