At the end of a dozen shots the grebe cornered in the river decided in his slow way that he was being hunted while above water, so he simply failed to come up. A grebe has been known to stay under five minutes when loosening water-weeds for its nest or when pursuing fish for its supper. This one was seen no more by the gunners, and after waiting half an hour or so they went away, firm in the belief that the last shot had really reached him, but that he had in his death throes become entangled in water-weeds and remained there. Comforting for the gunners, no doubt, and very satisfactory to the grebe. Ten minutes after they had disappeared the bird reappeared and went on feeding as before.
He had simply been floating along, under water all but the tip of its bill, which protruded as far as the nostrils and gave him ample opportunity to breathe. All these are clever feats, of course, but are explicable. The grebe has to live, either on or in the water, and he has learned how to do it even with the hand of man against him. He has one other trick, however, the mechanism of which I have never been able to understand. Swimming along on the surface he will, if he cares to, suddenly sink as if made of lead, feet first. How does he do this? One moment he is as buoyant as a cork; the next he goes down like a flatiron. “Spirit duck” is another name of his. He deserves it.
Another bird that is always linked, in my mind, with the sea wind beating the long marsh grasses into panicled waves and the fine rain of the equinoctial hanging the sheltered culms with strung pearls, is the Carolina rail. Some of them breed hereabouts, but the greater number of them are on their way from Labrador, where they have brought up the season’s young, to the banks of the Orinoco or the steaming swamps that border the Amazon.
How they ever make the flight back and forth each year is one of those mysteries of which the wilderness world is fascinatingly full. Hardly with threats and beating of bushes can you drive them out of the marsh grass. When one of them does take to the wing it is with reluctance and apology for his awkwardness oozing from every pore. If you will put some brown feathers, a pair of dangling legs, and two short, inadequate wings on a misshapen bottle and send it fluttering through the air over the grass tops for a rod or two, you will have a good imitation of a Carolina rail protesting at being kicked out of the Poa serotina.
Once is always enough for him. You may go to the exact spot where he dropped into the grass again and raise all the hullabaloo you wish. Only with a dog can you start him out again, and the third time he will not flush even for the dog. Yet with this equipment Porzana carolina leaves Labrador in the latter part of August and arrives in Venezuela during November! Perhaps he does part of the journey on foot, for he is certainly better equipped for walking than for flight.
The rail is the incarnation of timidity, and you may look long even when the marsh is full of them before you see one. The best way is to slip your canoe quietly up some narrow creek where the tall grass waves far above your head and lie silent in it where you may scan either bank. Trampling through the grass it seems thick almost to impenetrability, but with your head on a level with its roots rather than the tops, you will see that it is full of Gothic-arched aisles, sometimes widening into under-grass cathedrals with nave and transept, sometimes narrowing into invisibility, though there is always a secret door through which the initiated may pass.
Down the widest of these aisles comes the runway of the muskrat. Through the tallest of them may stalk the bittern with his long neck stretched straight out before him, and his sharp bill pointing the way. These are the broad highways of the marsh, but the rail does not travel them much. Even their seclusion is too public for him. He prefers the narrowing passages that lead him to close-pressed grass culms. These cannot bar his way, for that peculiar wedge-shaped build which makes him so ridiculous on the wing is just what he needs here. It allows him to follow the point of his bill and slip through the thickest growth of culms without a rustle and without disturbing the tops. Hence if you are fortunate enough to see him, he is just as likely to step forth from a solid wall of grass as from one of the pointed arches of the openings along the way.
You will not hear the grass rustle nor see it move, but the rail will be there, intent and preternaturally solemn. His head is thrust downward and forward, his tail is cocked nervously high behind, and he walks gingerly, as if apologizing to the mud for making tracks in it. You may see him climb a rush by clutching it with his toes, and feed on the seeds above; you may see him swim deftly across the creek, for he is a good swimmer. But the least motion on your part will send him into the thick grass again so quickly that he seems to dematerialize.
Old gunners tell me that a rail will slip under water and cling to a reed with only his bill above the surface, thus imitating the grebe in his methods of concealment. They say that when hard pushed by dogs and guns they go entirely beneath the surface and sometimes cling there until drowned; also that they have known rails to go into fits and finally swoon from fright. I cannot vouch for these things myself, but I believe that if any bird ever swooned from fright it was a Carolina rail.
Duck, grebe, plover, and rail may come to us storm-driven by the stress of the equinoctial. Not so the loon. He rides the northeaster, and you may hear him whooping in wild glee as he slides down the gale. His gray breast is brave to buffet gray crests of Arctic seas and his mighty thighs are built to drive the broad webbing of his agile feet till he whirls through icy waters like a spirit. Alert, defiant, mighty, he is a familiar figure of the wild gale that has spun a thousand miles across turbulent seas, and when he lights in our inland waters he comes not for refuge, but because the restless joy of storm riding has happened to bring him hither.