Stymphalian and Other birds

Abstract

Miss Sylvia Benton, in a recent note, identifies the bird which appears on some of the coins of Stymphalos ‘rising above the leaves of a Water Plantain … with a Fritillary on either side… The bird wears ear-flaps, and for me a marsh bird with earflaps must be meant for the Great Crested Grebe’.This identification seems to me convincing, though the bill as represented on the coins is perhaps rather short and thick. On April 29th and May 23rd 1974 I visited Stymphalos, in company with my family, in the hope of confirming that the Lake is still within the Grebe's range. This we were unable to do, and I am delighted to learn from Mr Buxton's note that ‘the bird breeds now on the Stymphalian lake’.The Lake certainly offers in its extensive reed-beds a most suitable breeding-ground for Grebes, which build partly floating platforms of marsh vegetation to serve as nests. Adult birds sleep on the water and are fish-eaters. Grebes cannot therefore have suggested the different literary variants of this Labour of Herakles.