The male swims beside them and dives after food, which he puts into the gaping mouths of the young as they chirp and flap their little stumpy wings.
Grim knows the divers well, and they know her--or so, at least, they think.
This morning, however, in her insatiable hunger, she sets her teeth into a webbed foot and upsets the little boat, so that all the young ones fall out. With the greatest possible speed she gulps down the whole flock, and then, more or less appeased, goes to the bottom, having learnt feathers do not disagree with her at all.
Until next morning she found herself just as hungry again.
Then she was fortunate enough to gain fresh experience about feathers.
In the early dawn, while the rays from the rising sun shed their peculiar colours over the bog, and made it shine with green and yellow, with purple and indigo, she made a dash at a fish on the surface, without suspecting that up in the air above her there was a winged rival, who also desired the booty.
The tern swooped headlong downwards as Grim leaped headlong upwards, and the mouths of the two spoilers closed at the same moment over the little fish. Grim, however, opened her mouth the wider, and closed it with the greater force, and she bit with a voracious violence as great as if she were about to eat the carcass of an ox.
She got the fish and the tern’s head in the same mouthful, noticed that she was well laden, and backed downwards, drawing the bird with her into deep water, where she swallowed her strange prey.
What an immense blessing fish with feathers were! For several days she felt so thoroughly satisfied!
From that time she considered every creature upon the surface of the water as her lawful booty. No sooner did a wild duck drop on to the water in its evening flight, than Grim darted up after it from her hole in the mud. At intervals of a day she took both the grebes and cleared the creeks of coots and a couple of young storks that had come for the purpose of learning to fish.