BIRD NOTES IN WANSTEAD PARK. 297
PROVIDED with a couple of pocket telescopes, and a
small tin box for securing specimens, my companion and I
start for a Saturday afternoon's stroll. The day has been
line, with a fresh wind that sounds through the trees and makes it a
pleasure to step out briskly, and gives a feeling of new life after
the muggy weather of this season of floods and storms.
We make our way to a park, not twenty miles from London,
with a fine sheet of water which the wind is curling in ripples
that break in noisy little waves on the further bank.
Of course we look out for water-birds, as we have so often
done before—often indeed in vain, but not always so by any
means ; scaups, pochards, and a fine Diver, made out with
almost certainty to be the Black-throated, have rewarded us for
weighting our pockets with a telescope. And now, is there
anything for us to-day ? Yes, surely, don't you see him ? Not
far from the shore a slender graceful bird that is down under
water almost as soon as he is caught sight of : now out with the
glasses, set for the right distance, and walk quickly while he
keeps below. Up he comes again, a beautiful creature with long
neck and long head and beak, the grey on the throat running
back under the edge of the dark crown of the head almost to
where the crest just projects behind, and which a puff of wind
curls up and makes all the more apparent. Now he is down
again without a splash or the least disturbance of the water ;—
then we walk nearer and take out pencil and paper to note down
the striking features as soon as he reappears. He rises again
within easy range of the glasses and we remark the dark neck
below the grey throat blending with wavy transverse lines into
the pure white breast, the red colour of the sides of the neck, and
the white on the wing joining the equally white under parts,
giving the idea of the nearly black wings being tucked up on the
back. The bird has the unmistakable aspect of a grebe, but
which is it ? From the figure and description in Yarrell un-
doubtedly it is the Red-necked Grebe, Podiceps rubricollis, a
rare bird, mentioned as having once or twice been seen before in
Essex and reported to have been killed in some other counties
in England, most frequently on the coasts of Northumberland
and Durham.
We leave the elegant stranger, swimming with amazing rapi-
dity into the middle mere, and we make our way to the woods.