Dauphin was a “born naturalist,” as his father called him, which meant that the lad had a sense of the beauty and wonder of nature, and went about with his eyes open. From the furred and feathered dwellers of the wilderness into which the family had moved, when Dauphin was a small child, he had secured and mounted a collection of specimens that would have graced the great college which it was his ambition some day to attend.
“Let’s go over and have a look at him in the morning, Rob,” eagerly responded Dauphin.
Rob agreed, but it was rather late in the afternoon instead of early in the morning, as they had planned, before the boys were ready for their trip.
Cut-off Slough had once been a part of the river. A long bend, a mile around, had, in a time of unusual high water, been cut off by the flood breaking over and wearing a new channel through the narrow neck of land, not more than fifty feet across. The hundred or more acres enclosed in the great bend had now become an island, and the old bed of the river a deep lagoon, or slough, as it was called, making an ideal home for fish and wild fowl. The wearing of the new channel of the river had formed a bar of sand across the mouth of the lagoon, high and dry during the summer, but now, in the spring rise, overflowed, so that the boys waded knee deep in the cold water to gain its banks.
Great trees, oak, maple, linden, birch, and ash, overhung the still water, and the western sun cast dark shadows almost across its surface.
“It’s lucky for us it isn’t July,” said Dauphin, “or we couldn’t stay in this place without face nets; the mosquitoes would eat us alive.”
“Seems to me they are bad enough now,” replied Rob, slapping at a dozen big fellows that had struck his face. “Sh-sh! there is our beauty and his sober wife. Over there by the stump with the white streaks, and the limb sticking up.”
“Too far for these small shot,” whispered Dauphin; “I don’t want to use large shot; spoils the plumage. Let’s crawl closer.”
The two boys crouched down, and on hands and knees slowly crawled through the tall grass and reeds to where a point of land jutting out into the water would give them the advantage they sought. But just as Dauphin was about the fire the shot that would add another valuable specimen to his collection, something occurred that drove all thoughts of ducks from their mind. The “stump” lowered its “limb” that had been sticking straight up, and out from its sides spread two wings, fully eight feet from tip to tip. As the “limb” bent over, the white streaks down the “stump” stood out in regal plumes from the crest of a magnificent bird.
“Oh, Rob,” gasped Dauphin, “it must be the Great Blue Heron. I have never seen one before, but Professor Hodge’s son Clifton, at Carleton, sent me the picture of one, and told me to keep my eyes open for him. He says they are rare now, though they used to be numerous, especially in the northern part of the state, and the college has no specimen of the bird.”