Jan., 1919 A RETURN TO THE DAKOTA LAKE REGION if 
gested a pair of twins. As I was watching them, the horse of the Rural Route 
mail carrier came jogging along over the Bridge and they disappeared—every 
one in sight on the Coulee disappeared. When I had taken the farm mail and 
the carrier surrounded by his bags had gone on, the Coot was the first to re- 
appear, but then from under the Bridge, side by side came the twins, crests up ; 
most attractive little creatures. 
In the Stony Point Bay I watched a pair one day swimming around among 
the canes. The two chums, like the pair seen under the Bridge, swam close to- 
gether, dived together, and came up together. When the inseparables did get 
separated for a moment, the one in sight called and looked around nervously, 
then took a short cut through a cane projection to a bay where it found its 
missing mate; after which they swam back to their starting point, diving lei- 
surely as they came. 
The quiet Eared Grebes were a decided contrast to a pair of cocky little 
Horned Grebes also seen from the Bridge. The first time I looked down on one 
of them with his small head, short-pointed bill, and puffy black cheeks, the 
wind was blowing so hard that the feathers of his hight side crests were blown 
about and he turned nervously from side to side. At my next visit I found him 
out in the middle of the Coulee by himself, absorbed in pluming and diving. 
When he came up wet, he would rise above the water and give a droll little 
forward shake of his body as if on purpose to fluff out the pretty side crests. 
Sometimes the fluffing would go so far that the black wedge of the crown be- 
tween the light brown crests would be reduced to a line. As he sat on the 
water below me, I could see his red eye through the glass, as well as his red- 
dish brown throat and side, and his black back. When he turned and lay on 
his side the beautiful white Grebe breast shone out as a good distant recogni- 
tion mark, and he could also be recognized by the adept Grebe way of turning 
head over bill and vanishing below. 
A few days later the cocky little Horned Grebe was feeding in the Coulee 
throughout the two hours that I spent on the Bridge above. As he came up 
from feeding below, he would plume his feathers, stretch a wing so that the 
white patch showed, and sometimes rise and flap both wings. As his crests 
dried, they looked silvery gray. Before I left he was joined by his mate who 
I imagined had just come from her nest. But as they were a second pair of 
twins, I could only judge by inference that as he had already attended to his 
toilet 1t must be she who now dipped and plumed and stretched a wing till a 
webbed foot showed behind. 
As I watched them, a Duck flew up the Coulee disappearing around a 
bend. Then thunder broke from the clouds that had been gathering, and I 
started for the farmhouse three miles away. As the thunder rolled nearer, in- 
stead of conscientiously keeping outside the squares of wheat or following dead 
furrows where footfalls do no harm, with humble apologies to the farmers, [ 
took short cuts across the growing grain. But even so the storm burst over 
may head, the rain quickly drenching me and the lightning flashing around me. 
Some children, pulling mustard in the wheat fields had also been caught, and 
as T neared the farmhouse I saw the farmer standing in the storm violently 
waving them to hurry home. Afterwards a friend who had been remonstrat- 
ing with me about wading in the sloughs, quoted statisties regarding the num- 
ae ‘i people killed annually on the treeless prairies of North Dakota, ending 
yy admonishing me never to he caught out in another thunder storm! So, 
