GREBES : Family Colymbidae [ 79 ] 



occur regularly in summer along the Columbia River. Undoubtedly they 

 breed in other coastal lakes to the south, though we have no definite 

 records of our own. 



The nest (Plate 10, 5) is a pile of decaying vegetation, the heat of which 

 undoubtedly assists in incubating the eggs, which the parent birds leave 

 covered with damp rotting material during their absence. Gabrielson 

 witnessed this performance once. The parent bird stood on the nest 

 drawing the wet material over the eggs with the bill. When the eggs 

 were thoroughly covered, two or three green reeds were seized in the bill 

 and broken with a jerk and twist of the head so that they bent over the 

 nest. The adult then slipped into the water and swam quietly away. The 

 eggs are laid from late April to early June. Normal dates extend from 

 May 9 to June 6, but there is one manuscript record in the Biological 

 Survey files of a nest at Malheur containing five newly hatched young on 

 April 2.7, 1914 (Fawcett). 



Although clumsier than its near relatives, the Pied-billed Grebe is 

 nevertheless an accomplished diver, able to perform all the feats credited 

 to others of the family. The newly hatched babies can swim and dive 

 almost as soon as they leave the egg, their prettily streaked heads and 

 soft, colored down harmonizing astonishingly well with the water vege- 

 tation in which they hide when alarmed. After the young are feathered 

 out, these grebes congregate in little flocks in the larger ponds and swamps 

 and feed on the abundant aquatic life found there during the summer 

 months. During the fall and winter they scatter somewhat and at that 

 time may be found in any open water. There is a noticeable increase in 

 the numbers present on the coast in October, and most of our birds evi- 

 dently spend the winter there or south of our borders. 



Like the other grebes, the "dabchick" feeds on fish, frogs, water in- 

 sects, and various other insects largely gleaned from the surface of the 

 water. Two stomachs, taken at Mulino in October 1913, each contained 

 bits of various water insects, fragments offish, and a ball of grebe feathers 

 that comprised 50 per cent of the stomach contents in one case and 85 

 per cent in the other. 



