16 THE CONDOR Vol. XVIII That our small wayside slough witfi Hydroehelidon and its aomrades was but a fortunate incident on the prairie, the song of a Grasshol?per 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 jack-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 and 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 be 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 femme Duck disappearing far across the sky, till finally our list of species included a large pro?)ortion 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 w?th 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 sout.hern Texas had now been seen in North Dakota. While the Western Grebe---
