Jan.,' 1919 A RETURN TO THE DAKOTA LAKE REGION 7 gested a pair of twins. As ! was watching them, the horse of the Rural Route mail carrier came jogging along over the Bridge and they disappeared--every one in sight on the Coulee disappeared. When I had taken the farm.mail and the carrier surrounded by his bags had gone on, the Coot was the first to re- appear, but then from under the Bridge, side by side came the twins, crests up; most attractive little creatures. In the Stony Point Bay I watched a pair one day swimming around among the canes. The two chums, like the pair seen under the Bridge, swam close to- gether, dived together, and came up together. When the inseparables did get separated.for a moment, the one in sight called and looked around nervously, then took a short cut through a cane projection to a bay where it found its missing mate; after which they swam back to their starting point, diving lei- surely as they came. The quiet Eared Grebes were a decided contrast to a pair of cocky little Horned Grebes also seen from the Bridge. The first time I looked down on one of them with his small head, short-pointed bill, and puffy black cheeks, the wind was blowing so hard that the feathers of his light side crests were blown about and he turned nervously from side to side. At my next visit I found him out in the middle of the Coulee by himself, absorbed in pluming and diving. When he came up wet, he would rise above the water and give a droll little forward shake of his body as if on purpose to fluff out the pretty side crests. Sometimes the fluffing would go so far that the black wedge of the crown be: tween the. light brown crests would be reduced to a line. As he sat on the water below me, I could see his red eye through the glass, as well as his red- dish brown throat and side, and his black back. When he turned and lay on his side the beautiful white Grebe breast shone out as a good distant recogni- tion mark, and he could also be recognized by the adept Grebe way of turning head over bill and vanishing below. A few days later the cocky little Horned Grebe was feeding in the Coulee throughout the two hours that I spent on the Bridge above. As he came up from feeding below, he would plume his feathers, stretch a wing so that the white patch showed , and sometinges rise and flap both wings. As his crests dried, they looked silvery gray. Before I left he was joined by his mate ?vho I..imagined had just come from her nest. But as they were a second pair of twins, I could only judge by inference that as he had already attended to his toilet it must be she who now dipped and plumed and stretched a wing till a webbed foot showed behind. As I watched them, a Duck flew up the Coulee disappearing around a bend. Then thunder broke from the clouds that had been gathering, and I started for the farmhouse three miles awsy. As the thunder rolled nearer, in- stead of conscientiously keeping outside the squsres of wheat or following dead furrows where footfalls do no harm, with humble apologies to the farmers, i took short cuts across the growing grain. But even so the storm burst over my head, the rain quickly drenching me and the lightning flashing around me. Some children, pulling mustard in the wheat fields had also been caught, and as I neared the farmhouse I saw the farmer standing in the storm violently waving them to hurry?home. Afterwards a friend who had been remonstrat- ing with me about wading in the sloughs, quoted statistics regarding the num- ber of people killed annually on the treeless t)rairies of North Dakota, ending by admonishing me never to be caught out in another thunder storm! So,
