n you may watch the black terns wheeling and turning in
the blue sky, like beautiful great swallows. They are easily
distinguished even at a considerable height by their white wing bars. A
loon paddles slowly across the bay with tantalizing unconcern. It is of
no use to follow him, however, even with muffled oars. He knows a trick
worth any two of yours. Huge fellow as he is, he dives beneath the
surface, leaving not a ripple behind him. After five minutes of puzzled
waiting you may see him--or is it his double?--pop up from the water
many rods away, as serene and still as if he had not just executed a
submarine maneuver hardly to be excelled by the latest torpedo boat.
Quite as expert a performer is the pied-billed grebe, who swims long
distances with body submerged and only the tip of the bill out of the
water. Unobserving gunners conclude that he has gone to the bottom of
the lake, and call him the hell-diver. The grebe spends half of his
life in or on the water. His nest is a raft buoyed upon a clump of
decaying vegetation, and looks like a floating island moored to a reed.
Birds of the lake, too, seem the swallows--tree swallows, rough-winged
and barn swallows. They skim the water hither and yon in mad pursuit of
prey. No degree of familiarity with their mud nests avails to deprive
these winged atoms of their halo of spring and romance.

Birds of high degree occasionally visit our humble lakelet. A bald
eagle has been seen on the lightning-scarred branch of its tallest oak.
Blue herons flap their majestic way from shore to shore. If you were
born with a silver spoon in your mouth you may even be so lucky as to
see a snowy heron passing through to some heronry in the wilds of
Canada. The night herons come every spring to their ancient rookery in
a swamp hard by. As the shadows fall the birds may be heard calling,
"squawk, squawk," while they make their way down the creek to their
fishing grounds in the lake.

For the better part of our bird neighbors the summer sojourn is no
_dolce far niente_. They come north that their babies may have
wholesome air and suitable food. A gay young husband, like the
ruby-throated humming bird, shirks domestic responsibilities, but he
expects only two wee nestlings. A brood of five or six requires the
assiduous attention of both parents. Baby blue jays, for example, seem
to have an unlimited appetite. Their scolding, snarling cries begin
with the early dawn and only cease with nightf