He stared, unseeing, through the window and remembered the girl who had made the party magic. She had been possessed by a wild gaiety that night, which had been quite unusual, although she had drunk nothing. She had danced with him. They had never danced together before. He had said goodbye to her, not knowing that it would be for the last time. He wondered if he had been right to leave St. Agnes, and if it had all been worth while.

Rob was thinking about Tom French. He had told Tina that he had liked him. That, of course, was untrue. Tom had been pompous. He had told Rob once about a rare bird he had found on some private land. Rob put it out on the grapevine, and Tom had been furious. There had not been much damage—ahedge had been a little dented in places—but Tom had lectured him about ethics and responsibility, and the image of the birdwatcher in the community. It had made him sick. He wondered if Tina would have understood if he had told her the truth. She was a strange girl. He had thought that she had been close to Tom at one time, but she seemed quite detached now. Perhaps she was just very honest. Not a hypocrite like most other people, like him. He wondered how many people were really sorry that Tom was dead.

Adam quietly said goodnight to the others and climbed into his sleeping bag. He wished he could be more like them, more relaxed, more extrovert. He hoped desperately that he was not spoiling the trip for them. He slept fitfully, troubled occasionally by a nightmare of water and claustrophobia.

Tina did not lie near to Adam, but she slept lightly and when he cried out in his sleep she woke up. She began to devise a weird and complicated trap to catch a black stork and soon drifted back towards sleep. After all, she thought as she dozed, men were only a distraction. Since meeting Adam at Scardrift Flat she had not been able to concentrate on her ringing. Neither had she been able to give full attention to her university work and that was important. She wanted to be a professional ornithologist, not to play at it like these twitchers. She should have realized that it would not work with Adam, should be grateful that she had come to her senses so quickly. She should have learnt her lesson from Tom. She had been infatuated with him when she was sitting O-levels and she hadn’t got the grades she had hoped for. She hadn’t resented it. Not then. Not until Tom gave up ringing, gave up serious birdwatching and became a twitcher. Twitching was a distraction too. She should never have come on this trip. She was missing an important lecture, but she had wanted to see the bird. She hoped that they would see the stork early the next day, so that she could return to Southampton to her work and the ringing group. She slept again and dreamed happily of cannon-netting thousands of waders, many with foreign rings.