Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/102

72 doubt, Cheshire and Shropshire are the headquarters of the great crested grebe, though now that the bird is rapidly extending its range, other counties are well populated. Thomas Pennant, a Flintshire man, describes it thus at the end of the eighteenth century: "These birds frequent the meres of Shropshire and Cheshire, where they breed, and the great East Fen in Lincolnshire, where they are called Gaunts." Montagu copied this distribution, but most later writers, though referring to Lincolnshire, ignored the other two areas; Cheshire, to many a southerner, is still an unknown country, wild and uncivilised, inhabited by country boors or, in the industrial portions, by barbarous sons of toil! Can any good thing exist in Cheshire? they ask.

About the middle of the last century the grebes in Cheshire, as elsewhere, had a tough struggle for existence; they were persecuted unmercifully for their plumage. How much this exploitation of the unfortunate bird for its silky breast had to do with one of its names—the tippet grebe—is uncertain. In summer it wears a trill which is often described as its tippet; nevertheless the "grebe fur" was used for an article of feminine attire known as a tippet, and once the bird had earned the name, tippet may have been transferred to its own neck adornment. When the price of the deceased grebe had risen to about a pound Bird Protection came to the rescue and accomplished much, but in Cheshire private rather than public efforts saved the situation. Most of the meres on which they nest are on game preserves, and the bird, though not on the game list, received passive but very effective protection.

The great crested grebe, the largest of its family, is a handsome but rather peculiar-looking fowl. Though a bird of the water it is in no way a duck, and is more nearly related to the divers. It is a little smaller and very