EED-NECKED GEEBE. 245 



exceptions, take their departure to the sheltered bays 

 along the sea coast, and are there met with till severe 

 weather sends them south, to be no more seen till the 

 returning' spring. 



Mr. A. W. Partridge, writing to Mr. Stevenson, says 

 that he has met with these birds in some numbers in 

 Heacham Bay in the end of August and beginning of 

 September, and it is possible that they may often be 

 mistaken for other divers. Forty years ago, Mr. Dowell 

 writes that great crested grebes were not uncommon 

 at Blakeney during the winter months, and that he 

 had killed several in that neighbourhood, all of which 

 were young ones. The late Mr. Cresswell, of Lynn, told 

 Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., that from a gun punt, when 

 shooting in the Wash, he once winged a great crested 

 grebe, which "came at him like a fury" and would 

 have attacked him had he not knocked it on the head 

 with a paddle. See also a similar instance of the 

 pugnacity of this bird quoted in the "Rambles of a 

 Naturalist in Egypt " (p. 284) from " Land and Water." 

 The same pugnacity has been observed in a red-throated 

 diver, which, left by the tide, charged at his assailant till 

 stopped by being caught between his legs. 



PODICIPES GRISEIGENA (Boddaert.)* 

 RED-NECKED GREBE. 



Mr. Stevenson thus writes in 1860 of this species : — 

 " A regular, though not very numerous, visitant late in 

 autumn and early in spring, appearing on our broads 

 and inland waters between the beginning of November 

 and the middle of March." 



Scarcely a winter passes without a few of these 

 birds (not unfrequently adults) being met with, but the 

 months of February and March, 1865, witnessed a re- 

 markable influx such as has never been repeated. Mr. 

 Stevenson communicated the results of his observations 



** The specific term rubricolUs, by which this bird was long 

 known, has to give way to that of grisei^ena, bestowed previously. 



