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Updated: May 2, 2025
As long as you wild ducks still had the power on Takern, they did not wish to drain it, for, at least, they got some good out of you; but now, grebes and coots and other birds who are no good as food, have infested nearly all the reed-banks, and the people don't think they need let the lake remain on their account."
I have occasionally seen freshly-killed ones hanging up in the market in November; I have, however, never seen it alive or shot it in the Islands. Mr. Couch, writing to me in December, 1876, told me that Mr. De Putron had told him that Little Grebes had bred in his pond in the Vale the summer before, and Mr.
"Loons and Grebes are swimming birds, like Ducks or Gulls, but both belong to quite a different order from any of the others and each of them belongs to a family of its own. They can barely move at all on land, and spend all their lives on the water, excepting in the nesting season, when they make curious floating nests of dead herbage in reedy marshes.
Mallard, teal, dabchicks, and moorhens breed there regularly, and in hard weather a number of rarer birds drop in. Snipe are often seen by one of the shallower ponds, and occasionally such divers as goosanders appear and give an exhibition of fish-catching. These, like the tufted ducks and grebes, are entirely self-supporting.
The grebes glided about with new feather-collars around the neck; and the jack-snipes were gathering straws for their nests. The farm-hand got into a scow, laid Jarro in the bottom of the boat, and began to pole himself out on the lake.
Looking about I soon found a pretty thing in which to array myself, and quickly started after the others, risking my neck in my desire to imitate the new mode of motion I had just witnessed. The water was delightfully cool and refreshing, and the company very agreeable, ladies and gentlemen all swimming and diving about together with the unconventional freedom and grace of a company of grebes.
In addition to the birds already named three of them new to me we had seen great blue herons, little blue herons, Louisiana herons, night herons, cormorants, pied-billed grebes, kingfishers, red-winged blackbirds, boat-tailed grackles, redpoll and myrtle warblers, savanna sparrows, tree swallows, purple martins, a few meadow larks, and the ubiquitous turkey buzzard.
Herons, kingfishers, moorhens, coots, grebes, ducks, teal, various divers, are all proscribed on behalf of trout. Herons are regarded as most injurious to a fishery. As was observed a century ago, a single heron will soon empty a pond or a stretch of brook.
Yet there are upland geese with webbed feet which rarely go near the water; and no one except Audubon, has seen the frigate-bird, which has all its four toes webbed, alight on the surface of the ocean. On the other hand, grebes and coots are eminently aquatic, although their toes are only bordered by membrane.
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