314 Sketches of Some Common Birds. 



lowish brown, streaked and sprinkled with darker shades. 

 The upper mandible of the long, javelin-like bill is dark, 

 the lower mandible more yellowish. The iris of her 

 flashing eye, now glaring angrily upon us, is bright yel- 

 low, and her feet are yellowish green. As she thus 

 crouches over her treasures, with wings partly spread and 

 body thrown back, so that she can launch her weapon 

 with greater momentum, she is indeed a doughty cham- 

 pion. Her undaunted, Spartan-mother-like defense of her 

 home excites our respect, and we leave her to rear her 

 brood in peace. We may chance upon a nest containing 

 downy young, while the valiant mother-bird is absent to 

 procure supplies. Their long, brownish-yellow down, 

 growing in patches over the head and body, causes the 

 little creatures to look even as comical as the mother-bird 

 in her wrath, or the father-bird when uttering his love- 

 notes. 



PIED-BILLED GREBE. 



One of the commonest birds of the swamp-lake is the 

 pied-billed grebe, though it is not confined to the swamps 

 of the river bottoms. When the glamour of nature began 

 to draw my steps aneid and along shore, I learned to 

 know this gentle, suspicious creature. Frequently I met 

 it gliding over the surface of the small inland ponds in 

 my daily rounds, and its remarkable adroitness in diving 

 soon showed me the folly of my thoughtless attempts to 

 shoot it. Won by its graceful movements on the water 

 before I discovered that it is well-nigh helpless on land, I 

 added it to the increasing list of my avian friends, and 

 ceased to persecute it when I chanced upon it. Its names, 

 both popular and scientific, are unpleasant in sound, and 

 none of them is likely to awaken interest in the owner. 

 Among the hunters and inhabitants of the swamp regions 

 it is commonly known as the "hell-diver," and though 

 this term expresses the most notable characteristic of the 

 grebe, it is not an appropriate appellation for the graceful, 

 buoyant bird riding in the water with head erect, watch- 

 ful for possible danger. The local name "water-witch " 

 is by no means inapt, for the creature disappears below 



