Looking down on the stream the sudden glory of a kingfisher passed before me; but the sooty-brown water-ouzel with his white bib, a haunter, too, of this water, I did not see.

Within a mile or so of Wells I overtook a small boy who belonged there, and had been to Shepton like me, noticing the birds.

"I saw a kingfisher," I said.

"So did I," he returned quickly, with pride.

He described it as a biggish bird with a long neck, but its colour was not blue--oh, no! I suggested that it was a heron, a long-necked creature under six feet high, of no particular colour.