16 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XVIII 
That our small wayside slough with Hydroehelidon and its comrades was 
but a fortunate incident on the prairie, the song of a Grasshopper Sparrow 
assured us as we drove on alongside the great wheat fields. Miles and miles 
of evenly headed blue green wheat, not a weed in sight, not so much as a 
jaclr-rabbit’s trail to mar the perfect stands of grain — it was indeed a beauti- 
ful sight. And as the bright prairie sun warmed us we eagerly whiffed the 
cool prairie breeze that came over the fields laden with the nutty smell of the 
wheat and the delicate fragrance of the dwarf prairie rose, the wild prairie 
rose that hides itself at the foot of the wheat, clinging tenaciously to life 
even on the ground that man has usurped. 
While the small roadside sloughs are but fortunate incidents of your 
way across the prairie, they serve to whet the appetite for the feasts offered 
by the marshes aud lakes. Many of the North Dakota tule marshes seem 
merely black streaks in the prairie. But with what keen zest, what high hopes 
the bird lover sights one of them ! Exciting black streaks ! When looked 
down upon from the top of a prairie billow or even from a high wagon, they 
give up one of their many well guarded secrets — an interior basin of open 
water. According to the width of this basin they may be known locally as 
marshes or lakes, and many of the so-called lakes are merely wider marshes 
that one may wade across. 
One long chain of black tule marshes, some denominated lakes but all 
making black streaks in the prairie, gave me a red letter day long to he 
remembered ; for as we drove by them they were alive with water birds. At 
last I was on the famous breeding grounds of the Ducks and Grebes ! 
How eagerly I scanned each successive marsh in the chain, luxuriating in 
the sight, fairly gloating over it, trying to see each bird that hid her young in 
the tules, trying to extract from my more experienced companions the name 
of each last female Duck disappearing far across the sky, till finally our list 
of species included a large proportion of the Ducks known to breed in the 
locality, besides Grebes, Coots, Terns, two Cormorants flying from good fish- 
ing grounds back to the alkali lake in which were their breeding islands, 
together with Yellow-headed Blackbirds and Marsh Wrens. In addition we 
had seen the old nesting hole of a Golden-eye and had flushed a Blue-winged 
Teal from her nest in the grass, a nest with nine small brown eggs to which 
she circled back as we drove on. Beautiful tule marshes teeming with water 
fowl on their home grounds ! What an intense satisfaction merely to see 
them in passing, to know that they were there ! Before our wonderful day of 
marshes closed we were driving by those whose water was shimmering in the 
low slanting sunlight, the moving throng glorified by the golden light. 
The day that we drove to Sheyenne River, in a secluded grassy marsh 
walled by a dense thicket from the fishermen’s trail along the river bank, we 
flushed two Blue-winged Teal and a Bittern that seemed to have found safe 
nesting grounds in the protected harbor. 
Before leaving this land of water fowl, I had the good fortune to spend 
a week between a marsh and a lake — Lake Elsie, at Hankinson. From across 
the lake were often heard the wailing cry of loons and the stentorian calls of 
Holboell Grebes, at times with a suggestion of the “hoarse Crow tones” Mr. 
Brewster speaks of, but oftener with a mellow bugle call. What a satisfac- 
tion it was to see the splendid birds ! They completed the Grebe family for 
me, and all but the tiny Mexican species which we found in southern Texas 
had now been seen in North Dakota. While the Western Grebe — 
