IV 



GREAT-CRESTED GREBE 



|N a still, placid lake before me there are swimming 

 twenty-seven Great-Crested Grebes, a sight not many 

 British ornithologists can boast of having seen. It 

 is a springtime evening one of those silent, calm 

 times, when we seem to be in closest touch with the 

 soul of Nature. The great, red sun, as it sinks to the blue hills, 

 is leaving behind it a long strip of glory, widening as it reaches 

 the nearest shore. From the church on the slope comes the sound 

 of bells, and the clanging seems to hang long over the water. 

 Swallows, screaming Swifts, and Martins are darting swiftly 

 across the lake, and, dipping, pick up flies, and leave behind a 

 little ring of circles which ever widens and grows larger until lost 

 in the gleaming mirror. 



It is hard to find a colour that is not here ; the deep red glow 

 turns the water into blood, as it were, and a dozen tints of green 

 and blue surround the sinking sun. Grey hills rise beyond blue, 

 and between the purple-tinted reeds green meadows stretch until 

 they merge into the slopes. Even the ploughed fields have caught 

 the sun's last rays, and the freshly turned sods have a bloom of 

 their own. A hundred Thrushes are singing their closing songs ; 

 Larks are rivalling one another in their race to see the last of the 

 western sun ; and Cuckoos are calling to their mates. 



Away on the eastern side of the lake a boat is passing through 



24 



