180 Union Bay 



"Not a bit. Bring your boat just inside the pads. I'll hand 

 you my binoculars on a paddle and you can see the show 

 just as well as if you had a ringside seat." 



The girl talked little, but I did learn that she worked in a 

 downtown office and came often to the marsh to sketch. I 

 answered her questions: the bird was a pied-billed grebe and 

 was widely distributed over the American continent. I had 

 seen it in the East, in Texas, and on Lake Patzcuaro in 

 Mexico, had wondered if it nested there and, if it did, how 

 the eggs and young could escape the many water snakes 

 which swam about in the shallows. The word pied-billed re- 

 ferred to the black band on the bill, and the word grebe was 

 said to pertain to the crest which decorated some of the 

 other species of grebes. This bird had no crest. Its common 

 name was hell-diver, or dabchick, or water witch. It looked 

 like— I pointed to one of the old birds near the bulrushes. 

 It nested regularly in the marsh but probably did not spend 

 more than a third of its time in the open. It was late for a 

 grebe to nest, so late that this was almost a record for the 

 state. People did not eat grebes. They had no particularly 

 harmful habits. If they had any use, aside from their beauty 

 and interest, it was as a target for hunters who could not 

 resist shooting at any moving object regardless of its in- 

 offensiveness. There were probably a dozen pairs nesting in 

 the marsh. I knew because I had heard them calling during 

 the mating season. It wasn't a duck, though it superficially 

 resembled one. A duck has fully webbed feet, while those of 

 a grebe are only partially webbed or lobed. They didn't sing 

 —even their best friend would admit that. They had a call 

 which sounded something like the barking of a small dog. 

 A teen-age operator swung his speedboat into a turn 

 which drove a breaking series of waves toward us but, as 

 before, the lily pads reduced them to quietness. I ignored 

 him and he did not repeat the swing. Had I raised a fuss he 



