Bambi sometimes saw something small rushing past him through the air, keeping close to the bank, like a fire-coloured lightning flash. “Srrr-ih!” shouted the kingfisher gently for himself as he sped past. A tiny whizzing dot. He glowed in blue and green, sparkled in red, lit himself up and he was gone. Bambi was amazed, he was enchanted, and he wished he could see this remarkable stranger close up, so he called to him.
“Don’t bother with ‘im,” the coot said up to him from the dense rushes. “Don’t bother with ‘im, you’ll never get an answer from ‘im.”
“Where are you?” asked Bambi and peered round in the reeds.
But the laughter of the coot came up loud and clear from a quite different place. “I’m over here! He’s a bad tempered bloke, him who you were trying to talk to just now, he don’t talk with anyone. There’s no point in trying to call to him.”
“He’s so beautiful!” said Bambi.
“Yeah, but he’s no good!” the coot replied, again from a different place.
“Why do you say that?” Bambi enquired.
The coot answered – again from a totally different place - “He can’t be bothered about any one or any thing. It don’t matter what happens, he never says hello to anyone and he never replies if anyone says hello to him. He never makes the alarm call when danger comes along and he’s never spoken a word to anyone.”
“The poor ...” Bambi started to say.
The coot continued speaking, and his cheerful, cheeping voice now, again, came from a quite different place. “I suppose he thinks we’re all jealous of that couple of colours he has in his feathers. I suppose that’s why he don’t want to let anyone get a closer look at him.”