60 UPLAND AND MEADOW. 



be a pleasure to observe them ; but, as it is, they aggra- 

 vate rather than entertain. You say to yourself, there 

 is a grebe ; but before the assertion is finished, the bird 

 is not there, and you stand with a vague impression that 

 you did see something, but cannot be sure. Between 

 winks, it reappears, and your doubt is redoubled, for 

 now you cannot be sure that it ever disappeared. This 

 feathered uncertainty I was accustomed to call a crested 

 grebe, but it now proves that I was mistaken. On the 

 contrary, there are two, not one, and neither is crested. 

 One is the red-necked grebe, the other the eared diver. 

 This is a pleasant mistake, whereby I have added a bird 

 to the previously large list found in this valley. Along 

 the sea-coast, and probably in the bay, these divers are 

 numerous from early autumn till spring ; but this does 

 not appear to be true of them as frequenting the river 

 at this point. I have seen none except when there was 

 an abundance of ice and snow ; yet, after all, why should 

 I be so positive ? A near neighbor, last summer, had a 

 pair of mocking-birds nesting in his garden, and I never 

 knew of it until long after they had gone south again. 

 I must often have heard them sing, and I must have 

 given to cat-birds and brown thrushes all the credit. 



Such, in brief, are the suggestions of a walk in winter, 

 when the Delaware and Poaetquissings are alike ice- 

 bound; when, as yet, no trace of spring is to be found ; 

 when, for all that greets the eye, we might as well be 

 miles within the arctic circle, rather than hundreds of 

 leagues below it. 



