COLYMBIDjE. 67 



Bryant Burgess wrote me word of a fine Crested 

 Grebe which was shot a few years ago at Risborough. 



Little Grebe {Podiccps minor). Local names, 

 Dabchick, Dobchick, Blackchin. This droll little bird, 

 the last on my list of * Residents,' is common on 

 our ponds, streams, and lakes, and on the river 

 Thames. It is a capital diver, and I have often 

 witnessed its amusing antics from behind an old elm 

 on the river banks in the playing-fields at Eton. 



' There is in the parish of Stanford Dingley, 

 Berks, a large and beautiful spring of water, clear 

 as crystal, the source of one of the tributaries of the 

 Thames. I was once bending over the bank of this 

 spring, with a friend, watching the water some five 

 or six feet down, as it issued from a pipe-like ori- 

 fice and stirred the sand around like the bubbling 

 of a cauldron, when there suddenly passed between 

 us and the subject we were examining, a form so 

 strange that we were at first doubtful to what class 

 of animals we should refer it. In reality, it was a 

 Dabchick, which, alarmed probably by the noise of 

 our conversation, was making for a place of safety: 

 as it passed within two or three feet of our faces, we 

 could distinctly see that it propelled itself by its 

 wings ; but it appeared not to have observed us, for 

 it kept on in a direct course for the head of the 

 spring. We searched long in the hope of discover- 

 ing it again, but failed ; and as there were no weeds 

 among which it could possibly hide above water, 



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