BIRD PARADISE 187 



the range of my knowledge enjoys a real joke any 

 more than a crow. 



Occasionally I hear of one of the little grebes 

 being seen in our hill country. The fellows are 

 active and in some ways interesting, but why 

 they should with their equipment seek the snow- 

 covered fields is a mystery. On the wing or in 

 the water they find their way quickly and are 

 more or less graceful in all their movements. 

 But when they attempt to practice walking they 

 show in every movement the ungainly efforts of 

 the novice. I suppose that we are sometimes 

 favored with their visits, through the agency of 

 a great storm. I am told that the heavy winds — 

 finding them on the wing near the coast — drives 

 them far inland before they can effect a landing. 

 Under such conditions, they seem to lose all 

 realizing sense of where they are or of where 

 they desire to go. A few years since, a large 

 number of these birds were given a shipwreck 

 of this character, hundreds of the creatures ap- 

 pearing in Central New York. Most of them 

 perished, only a very few being able to get back 

 again to the old home. Being water birds they 

 depend upon the brooks and open ponds for their 



