a trip in the dunes to the colony of Night Herons, I again 
studied it without, discovering anything more. 
Of the regular visitors to our shores the Red-throated 
Loon in winter plumage most nearly resembles the bird I 
observed. But in my humble opinion no Red-throated Loon 
ever possessed such a neck as this bird. Furthermore, I 
have examined in poor light, specimens of this loon at the 
same relative distance, taking into consideration the aid 
given by the telescope, and had no difficulty in seeing the 
spotted or mottled back of that species. No specimen of 
this loon that I have seen has had the pure or brilliant white 
underparts of the bird at Ipswich, and in no instance has 
the loon shown such a narrow dark stripe on the back of 
the neck. In addition, while it is possible for a Red-throated 
Loon to appear at Ipswich on May 30th in winter plumage, 
it is, to say the least, improbable that it has ever done so. 
Any puzzle, once you know the solution, seems simple, 
but I did not know the solution while at the beach, nor for 
some time after leaving it. My main idea seemed to be 
that the bird must be one of our regular visitors in plum¬ 
age I had never heard of, and certainly never seen, so I 
carefully searched for a description of one of our loons 
or a Holboelffs Grebe in some plumage that would corre¬ 
spond to what I saw, but the search was fruitless. It was 
more by accident than design that I turned back a page of 
Chapman's “Birds of Eastern North America," and quite 
casually started to read the description he gives of the first 
bird in the book. “Neck long and slender." I was not so 
casual in reading the rest. It is not a long description, in 
fact, it is very short, and it fitted that freak bird at Ipswich 
as a glove fits the hand. 
This is the description of ^Echmophorus occidentalis, the 
Western Grebe. I do not know that this bird has ever be¬ 
fore been seen on the Atlantic coast of North America; 
nevertheless, I feel quite properly convinced that it is the 
bird I saw. 
I have spent much time in the West since I became a bird 
student, over twenty-three years ago, but my observations 
there were very limited, and I did not see the Western Grebe 
61 
