Older PYGOPODES. 



Family PODICIPID^. 



iECHMOPHORUS OCCIDENTALIS (Lawrence). (1.) 



WESTERN GREBE. 



Although during the period in which I have been an observer 

 of the birds in Minnesota very few of this species have been 

 seen by myself, nor reported by others wliose observations 

 could be implicitly relied upon, I am able to record enough to 

 give it "a name and a place" in the fauna of our state. I first 

 met with an individual specimen in the collection of a German 

 living in St. Paul in 1859, and in 1861 I saw one amongst the 

 collections of Mr. Shroeder of the same city; but it first came 

 into my hands by my own gun in May of 1869, on the Red 

 River, and again in 1870 through the kindness of Mr. J. J. 

 Jamison, an eastern gentleman of amateur scientific proclivi- 

 ties who was shooting ducks in the autumn of that year at Big- 

 stone Lake. It was alone, and entirely unsuspecting to all 

 appearance. It was a mature male, and in good plumage, 

 meeting all the measures given in the descriptions of the ninth 

 volume of the Pacific Railroad Reports. Not until the spring 

 of 1883 did I see one again, and then in the same locality, or 

 within a few miles of it, on the Red River near Moorhead. It 

 has been several times reported without any verifications, one 

 of which was presumptively reliable, but as the party did not 

 regard its identification of sufficient importance to give me an 

 opportunity to endorse his own, I made no record of it amongst 

 my notes. In 1872, while collecting extensively in Santa Clara 

 county, California, I found it common for the species in Drink- 

 water Lake, a sort of lagoon some 12 miles south of San Jose 

 and a few miles within the limits of Sacramento, and in several 

 other kindred localities; but exceedingly common in March at 



