294 WILD-FOWL AND SEA- FOWL OF GREAT BRITAIN 



snow. The news has reached me from men who 

 were once my boyhood's school-mates to come to 

 the tide. Five miles one must go on a lonely road, 

 and after that, having crossed in the ferry-boat, 

 seven miles of bad marsh tramping brings us to 

 open water, a wide, wind-swept estuary. How we 

 got there I do not care to say, but we had to clear 

 a lot of dykes of considerable width, such as I 

 would not attempt to leap now unless a bull was 

 behind me. 



But what a scene awaited us ! There were about 

 a score of small fishing-smacks working on the tide, 

 some for one thing, some for another ; sprats, young 

 herrings, smelts, whitebait, and flounders, were all 

 there, in exhaustless quantities. 



The large Crested Grebe, known as the Cargoose, 

 or Marsh Goose. Gaunt, Tippet Grebe, and Crested 

 Ducker, is not now so numerous as it was in my 

 young days. Drainage has had much to do with 

 this, but not everything. Since the foolish craze 

 for specimens of British-killed birds with their eggs 

 and nests has come to the front, these birds have 

 suffered with others. The old birds, their eggs and 

 nests, also their curiously-striped young, all being 

 brought in for collectors, measures have been taken 

 at last for their preservation far more efficient than 

 those that the Bird Act can enforce, and these are 

 systematic personal supervisions by genuine sports- 

 men naturalists, on whose waters and meres a few 

 pairs still breed. In winter this Grebe visits the 

 coast ; in fact, if the weather is very severe, all 



