In North- West Canada. 151 



When a grebe is going to leave its nest, it pulls the weeds over 

 its eggs, and after covering them slides into the water and 

 swims off, but when the birds are startled oft' their nests sud- 

 denly, they have not time to cover the eggs. The only nests 

 of eggs I found not covered with weeds were those I startled 

 the birds from. 



Further round the lake I saw a pair of red-necked grebes 

 swimming about. Foster's terns, common terns, and ring- 

 billed gulls were also numerous, but I could not find the spot 

 where they were nesting. All these three species breed at 

 Plum Lake, a few miles further south, and they are also num- 

 erous at Whitewater Lake, at the foot of Turtle Mountain. 

 Here the nests of common terns and ring-billed gulls are said 

 to be so numerous that the small island in the lake is almost 

 covered with their nests. The terns lay their eggs in hollows 

 in the sand, but the ring-billed gulls make their nests of weeds, 

 in which they lay their eggs. These vary considerably, but are 

 at once distinguished from eggs of the American herring gull 

 by their smaller size. In " Nests and Eggs of North American 

 Birds," by Oliver Davie, the size of the ring-billed gull's eggs 

 is said to be from 2.75 to 2.80, by 1.60 to 1.75. This must be 

 a mistake, as Professor Ridgeway, in his manual, gives the 

 average size as 2.39 by 1.71, and the latter is the average size 

 of a series of eggs now before me. 



On the lake a number of mallards, shovellers, pintails and 

 other ducks were seen, and some of them had broods of young- 

 ones swimming around them. 



While wading through the rushes around the margin of the 

 lake, I was startled by a pair of large birds flying up a few 

 yards in front of me, and I soon saw they were little brown 

 cranes. There I found their nest, and was greatly disappoint- 

 ed to find it empty, but apparently all ready for the eggs. 

 The nest was very large, about three feet in diameter, and 

 stood about a foot above the shalloM^ water : it was made 

 of rushes and aquatic plants, with a slight cavity at the top, 

 and was built in a clump of thick rushes. I was evidently a 

 week or ten days too early for the eggs. I wandered around 



