WATER-BIRD WAIFS 



very shy, and will not fly away as would wild ducks 

 when we approach. So we may quietly watch the 

 grebe from the shore, and, especially if one has a strong 

 field glass, it is a beautiful sight. The popular name 

 of "Water Witch" is a tribute to the tribe's aquatic 

 skill. 



Though out in the West I have seen thousands of 

 these grebes, and others, in their breeding colonies, I 

 never had a better chance to observe one intimately 

 than one May right at home. A pair of Horned Grebes 

 alighted in a brook, but could not fly out, because, with 

 their small wings, they require a lot of room to flutter 

 and patter over the water in getting started. One of 

 them disappeared, but the other stayed in the part of 

 the brook near a house with a flock of tame ducks. A 

 netting had been placed at the upper end to keep the 

 ducks from swimming upstream, and below there was 

 a bridge, under which the bird apparently did not like 

 to go. The brook was hardly two feet wide, and Ned 

 and I went there for several days and watched and 

 photographed His Majesty. When we approached, 

 the pretty fellow, a male in fine plumage, would dive 

 and paddle off under water like a streak, and it was 

 so shallow that he was in plain sight, and we saw that 

 he used only his feet, not the wings, as propellers. 

 Sometimes he would flutter along the surface of water, 

 and then dive. After a time he became used to us, so 

 I would sit quietly on the bank with the reflecting 

 camera, while Ned would make him swim back and 



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