GREAT CRESTED GREBE. 



97 



beautiful sight ; there may have been thirty or forty of them. 

 Every now and then one or two dived out of sight; occasionally 

 a pair or two took wing ; and by-and-by the rest flew away 

 together, and, wheeling round, settled in the middle of the 

 lake. Although it was the 30th of May the reeds had not 

 attained a fourth of their ultimate height, and the Grebes had 

 only just begun to breed. Many nests were empty, many 

 contained only a single egg, and none of them contained more 

 than two. Although the nests were exposed to the bird's-eye 

 view of a passing Crow, on account of the smallness of the 

 reeds, none of the eggs were covered. 



" A week afterwards I found a very large colony of Great 

 Crested Grebes on the Garda See, a lake close to the sea, 

 about sixty miles west of the Gulf of Danzig. They were 

 breeding in an immense reed-bed, and as our boat neared 

 their nesting-grounds we saw the Grebes sailing majestically, 

 not to say indignantly, out of the side of the reed-bed. As 

 soon as we reached the place I put on my waders and was 

 soon in a dense forest of reeds, where it was very easy to lose 

 one's way. The water was above my knees, and the reeds 

 were far above my head. After stopping to take the nest of a 

 Great Sedge-Warbler with four eggs^ I soon found the colony 

 of Grebes. There were dozens of nests, biu never very close 

 to each other, and I soon filled my handkerchief with eggs. 

 It was the 5th of June, and only about half the nests contained 

 the full complement of eggs. The birds had evidently seen us 

 long before we approached, and had had ample time to retreat 

 with dignity. In the nests which contained three or four eggs, 

 they were warm and covered with damp moss ; but in those 

 containing only one or two they were uncovered and cold. 

 This applied equally to the nests on the outskirts of the reeds, 

 where the eggs could be seen by a passing Crow, and to those 

 hidden in the depths of the reed-bed. The natural inference is 

 that the eggs are not covered until the female begins to sit. 

 and that the object of covering them is not protective, at least 

 in the technical sense in which that word is used. The Grebes 

 cover their eggs, not to conceal them from enemies, but to 

 protect them from cold. In the recesses of a dense reed- 

 bed white eggs are as inconspicuous as in a hole in a tree or 

 in a bank." 



