I was eating lunch on the bank of a small tidewater stream that wandered up from Jamaica Bay, one day in May. The second sandwich was on its way when my eye caught a bit of buff that moved. There, within 30 feet, was a HORNED GREBE and he had been watching me, for ten minutes, without movement. A vagrant puff of air flicking the head plumes betrayed him.
He sensed discovery and slowly melted down into the water and disappeared. The mysterious control over his body so enthralled my youthful senses that I never thot of the gun.
They are quick as Loons in diving at the flash of a gun altho smokeless powder fired by criminals, sends more to their deaths.
They seek sheltered nooks when hard gales blow. From a little fishing shack on Hempstead Bay thru a telescope I watched six birds asleep, keeping head to wind by subconscious paddling.
From lower Yukon, Alaska, across British America to St. Lawrence Bay. South in Winter to Gulf Coast.