726 LITTLE GREBE. 



from 4-6 eggs, rather pointed at both ends, are deposited between 

 April and August ; two clutches being often produced in the season. 

 Their colour is creamy-white, until stained adventitiously ; and 

 their measurements are 1*5 by i in. The sitting bird, on leaving 

 the nest, almost always covers them with weeds, which are plucked 

 by the bill with astonishing rapidity. Incubation lasts about 

 20 days. The food is usually small fish, insects and vegetable 

 matter, but in winter marine animals are often consumed. Like 

 other Grebes, this species swallows feathers ; it also carries its 

 young on its back, as described in the cases of the Great Crested 

 and Slavonian Grebes. Prof. Newton has stated (Ibis 18S9, p. 577) 

 that a bird which could not have been more than twelve hours old, 

 crawled upon and crossed a table from side to side, dragging itself 

 forward by means of its wings quite as much as impelling itself by 

 its legs. The note of the old bird is a whit, zvhit. 



The adult male in spring (represented swimming in the foreground) 

 has the head, neck and upper parts dark brown ; very little white on 

 the secondaries ; chin black ; cheeks, throat and sides of the neck 

 reddish-chestnut ; under-parts chiefly greyish-white ; flanks dusky- 

 brown ; bill horn-colour, yellowish-green at the gape ; irides reddish- 

 brown ; legs and toes dull green. Length 9*5 ; wing nearly 4 in. 

 The female is slightly smaUer. In winter the chin is white, and the 

 head and neck are clove-brown, the general colour being paler. 

 The young are still duller in tint, with dusky streaks on the sides of 

 the head. 



In ' Research ' for January ist 1889, Mr. R. Newstead, curator of 

 the Chester Museum, called attention to some interesting points in 

 the anatomy of this Grebe and some others. The fibula is not 

 fused to the tibia, but is connected with it along the whole length 

 by a very strong ligament, so that by taking hold of the foot the 

 tibia can be made to rotate ; while there is a perforated and grooved 

 bone at the back of the tarso-metatarsus, which has three perforations 

 and carries eight tendons. Diagrams illustrative of the above were 

 kindly sent to me by Dr. W. H. Dobie, of Chester. 



An example of the American Pied-billed Grebe {Podilymlms 

 podicipes) — so young that it exhibited longitudinal stripes on the 

 neck — was exhibited by Dr. R. Bowdler Sharpe at the meeting of 

 the Zoological Society of London on June 21st 1881, and was 

 stated to have been killed near Weymouth in the previous January. 

 There had probably been an accidental exchange of specimens by 

 the dealer, for he sold the bird as merely a Little Grebe. 



