FOLLOWING THE WATER-BIRDS 159 



To speak of the swimming birds, there is probably 

 no more familiar sight in this line than to see a grebe, 

 or a small, scattered party of them, bobbing around in 

 a pond among the lily-pads. Most persons call them 

 ducks, but one can readily distinguish them by their 

 practice of frequently diving and remaining about 

 a minute under water. It is a very pretty sight to 

 watch them. Two kinds are ordinarily seen in East- 

 ern waters : the little brown fellow with a bill like a 

 hen is the pied-billed grebe or dabchick; the other is 

 the horned grebe, which in autumn has a white breast, 

 but in spring quite a gay plumage with noticeable 

 tufts of reddish-brown and black on the head. 



In the longitude of the Dakotas we find the west- 

 ern, Holboell's, and eared grebes nesting in the 

 sloughs. The advent of the great loon and the some- 

 what smaller red-throated loon into the larger ponds 

 or lakes is a not uncommon and interesting event. 

 How wonderfully they can swim and dive, and what 

 strange sounds are the laughter-like cries I Almost 

 any of the numerous species of the ducks are liable to 

 stop in the larger lakes, or even the smaller ponds. 

 In the hunting season the gunning-stands keep pretty 

 good track of the occurrence of the various ducks, but 

 in the spring hardly anyone is watching for them and 

 they slip through largely unnoticed. Persecution has 

 rendered them so shy that they are, in populous parts 

 of the country, very timid about showing themselves. 



The best way to see wild ducks inland in fall is to 

 watch in a gunning stand with the hunters and their 



