CRESTED GREBE 
33 
Opening of the Duck season (then December 2ist) 
flying swift and high as the guns drove them with the 
Duck from the weedy backwaters to the big Lake. 
With outstretched neck and rapid wing-beats they 
were not a difficult target to those to whom all that 
flies is fair game. The time of year, the number and 
condition of the birds seen, and the suitability of the 
locality combined to make me believe that they had 
nested, or perhaps were nesting even then, for all 
Grebes lay fairly late. Market-shooters call this 
species the Grebe, and its congeners (which they do 
not distinguish from each other) Dabchicks. 
BLACK-THROATED GREBE 
Tachybaptus ruficollis novce-hollandice 
Of the three Grebes inhabiting this district, the 
Black-throated is by far the most frequently seen. 
Like so many other of our birds, it would appear to 
change its quarters at the end of the summer without 
travelling so far as to entitle it to the name of migrant. 
In the autumn and winter it frequents the bay in 
company with the other Grebes, and also the Barwon 
River between the two breakwaters ; at this season 
the head in each sex is dark grey and the throat pure 
white. 
Early in October, however, when love calls, the 
white throat changes to glossy black, the rest of the 
head deepening to black also, and the paired birds 
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