388 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



their nests are irregularly grouped by the margins 

 of lakes, and placed behind a fringe of tall herbage. 

 While they are thus screened from the i^edestrians 

 on the banks, they are generally left exposed to 

 the boatmen on the water, from whom the birds, 

 conceal themselves by diving, and hide their eggs 

 by overlaying them with reeds and such herbage 

 as the locality may afford. The nest itself is little 

 more than a puddle in which the eggs are laid and 

 hatched. It is formed of huge masses of reeds or 

 kindred plants, often cropped in the green state 

 and laid almost anyhow athwart each other. 



The number of nests is generally greatly in 

 excess of the iDairs of breeding birds. This habit 

 of building more nests than the female requires 

 for immediate use, seems among our own birds to 

 be confined to the Wren and the Grebe. These 

 additional or "he-nests" (so called from the circum- 

 stance that the male Grebes use them, while the 

 females are sitting, as a vantage-ground from which 

 to descry the approach of the enemy) often afford 

 the only available firm footing in the immediate 

 neighbourhood on which the birds may rest them- 

 selves. This, however, is not the only use of these 

 suri^lus nests, if indeed it be their primary purpose. 

 The allocation of one to each bird does not exhaust 

 the number of nests usually provided; and it would 

 be absurd to say that the male required more than 

 one nest for a watch-tower, or that the nests were 

 constructed through mere caprice. I i*egard them 

 rather as multiple or reserve nests, provided, I have 

 no doubt, in anticipation of the ever-recurring winds 

 and floods to which they are exposed. The nest 

 itself is but a floating mass of pithless herbage 

 with its wonted rigidity soaked out ; and it is con- 

 tinually liable to be deranged, and not unfrequently 

 wrecked by the agitation of the water during storms. 

 The wary, wily, and agile Grebe, in view of such 

 contingencies, wisely provides a reserve in these 

 multiple nests to which it may transfer its eggs in 



