PODK'IPKS. 391 



or the twigs of some fallen branch, just sufficient to keep it from lieing swept away, and in 

 which usually five or six eggs are deposited. When sitting the female covers herself up with 

 the outer portion of the nest, and before leaving carefully covers up her eggs with the same 

 material, and diving close to the nest reappears again on the surface of the water ten or twelve 

 yards away. 



The eggs are usually five, but vary to seven in number for a sitting, elongate oval or 

 elliptical in form, when fresh the shell lieing more or less evenly or irregularly coated with white 

 lime, in some of the latter specimens portions of the pale bluish-white, or true colour of the shell, 

 is revealed, or again it might be tlie result of a scratch hy the bird's feet on the soft lime. A 

 few days, however, in the thoroughly water-saturated nest and the eggs are soon of a pale-brown 

 hue, and from this tint they may be found in ever varying shades from being stained with the 

 decomposing water weeds, to just prior to hatching, when they become on some specimens a 

 deep reddish-brown. A set of three taken on the 12th December, iSqq, on one of the lagoons 

 in the reed-beds on Gulpha Station, near Mathoura, in the Riverina District of Southern New 

 South Wales, measures:— Length (A) 2-2 x 1-33 inches; (B) 2-21 x 1-33 inches; (C) 2-05 x 

 1-32 inches. A set of live taken in the same locality and on the same date, measures :— Length 

 (A) 2-23 X 1-35 inches; (B) 2-19 x 1-34 inches; (C) 2-2 x 1-34 inches; (D) 2-2 x 1-33 inches; 

 (E) 2-17 x 1-34 inches. 



The breeding season usually commences in November, and continues until the end of 

 February. 



