streams, keep a look-out for two very remarkable divers— 
the great crested grebe and the dabchick. Both float low 
in the water, and may be identified at once from the fact 
that they have no tail. The great crested grebe has a con- 
spicuous dark chestnut-red frill round his neck, which can 
be set out like an Elizabethan ruff at will, though this is 
rarely done save in the courting season. The dabchick is a 
small bird—rather smaller than a pigeon—and has no erectile 
ornaments. The ‘“ grebe-flight’’ is shown in the coloured 
drawings, and it has further been already described. They 
will vanish beneath the water with startling suddenness, 
and remain below for a surprising length of time ; emerging 
at last far from the spot at which the dive was taken. 
One of the commonest birds of the countryside is the 
ring-dove, or woodpigeon. He is the largest of our pigeons, 
and may further be distinguished by the white half-ring 
round his neck. His flight scarcely needs to be described, 
for it differs in no essentials from the pigeons of our dove- 
cotes. His courtship flight has already been described here. 
The stock-dove is not quite so conspicuous, but may be readily 
distinguished from the fact that the neck has no white patch, 
while the outspread wings are marked by an imperfect bar 
of black. It is a bird, by the way, which shows a strange 
diversity of taste in the selection of the site for its nursery—a 
rabbit-burrow, a hole in a tree, an old squirrel’s drey, or the 
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