FILMED BIRDS.
Films have been taken this summer of a number of our rarer, or once rarer birds ; and some of the photographers have been astonished at their own discoveries of the ways of birds. The bird that has most astonished them is the greater crested grebe, which is now very common indeed. It is a strange mixture of the furtive and the brave. I have watched the bird step off the nest, dive below the water with an oily ease that is its peculiar gift, come up with a green water-lily leaf, cover up the eggs with this ingenious counterpane and then vanish completely. The whole per- formance has been quick and silent beyond credence. But the bird is one of the least nervous. It is evasive but never frightened ; and photographers have found that it soon comes to disregard a regular if inoffensive visitor. It will sit for its photograph within a yard or so and not turn a feather. The bittern has been approached almost as nearly ; but never shows quite such tameness. It is to the good that the crested, as common on water reservoirs near London as on Norfolk Broads (there are twenty pairs on one particular Broad) has supreme spectacular beauties.
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