40 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN DIVING BIRDS 



established there for sometime previous to this, for the shallow brush-grown 

 reservoir which they inhabited had then been in existence for nearly 20 years. 

 On the occasion just mentioned, Mr. Faxon saw or heard at least six or eight 

 different birds, one of which was accompanied by chicks only a few days old, 

 and on April 27, 1892, he discovered a nest containing five fresh eggs. 



During the following eight years Great Meadow was frequently visited by 

 our local ornithologists, and the manners and customs of the grebes were 

 closely studied. One or two birds often appeared in the pond as soon as it 

 was free from ice this sometimes happening before the close of March and 

 by the middle of April the full colony was usually reestablished. It was dif- 

 ficult to judge as to how many members it contained, for they were given to 

 haunting the flooded thickets, and we seldom saw more than three or four of 

 them on any one occasion; but at times, especially in the early morning and 

 late afternoon when the weather was clear and calm their loud cuckoo-like 

 calls and odd whinnying outcries would come in quick succession from so 

 many different parts of the pond that one might have thought there were 

 scores of birds. Probably the total number of pairs did not ever exceed a dozen, 

 while during some seasons there were apparently not more than five or six. 

 They built their interesting floating nests in water a foot or more in depth, 

 anchoring them to the stems of the sweet gale and button bushes, and laying 

 from five to eight eggs, which usually were covered by the bird whenever she 

 left them. Although a few sets of eggs were taken by collectors, the grebes 

 reared a fair number of young every season, and without doubt they would 

 have continued to resort to Great Meadow for an indefinite period had not the 

 reservoir been abandoned, and its waters almost completely drained in the 

 autumn of 1901; since then the birds have ceased, of course, to frequent the 

 place. 



The pied-billed grebe is not easily driven from its favorite nesting 

 haunts by the encroachments of civilization and is occasionally 

 found nesting in suitable localities in thickly settled regions or near 

 our large cities. A striking instance of this is shown in Mr. Clinton 

 G. Abbott's (1907) account of the nesting of this species in the Hack- 

 ensack Meadows, near New York City, in 1906, where an extensive 

 cat-tail swamp offered a congenial home for grebes and gallinules. 



Mr. Arthur T. Wayne (1910) says of its breeding habits in South 

 Carolina: 



This is an abundant permanent resident, breeding in fresh-water ponds or 

 large rice-field reservoirs, where the water is generally from 4 to 10 feet deep. 

 The birds are mated by the last of February, and the nests, which are com- 

 menced about the middle of March, are composed of decayed vegetable matter 

 anchored to buttonwood bushes or reeds. 



In the North Dakota sloughs, in 1901, we found the pied-billed 

 grebe nesting abundantly, in company with canvasbacks, redheads, 

 ruddy ducks, and coots, and examined a large number of nests, which 

 may be considered as fairly typical of its normal nesting habits 

 throughout the greater portion of its breeding range. The depth of 

 water in which the nest is located varies greatly, but most of the nests 

 are placed in water not over 3 feet deep. The nests are usually an- 

 chored to, or built up around or among, dead or growing reeds or 



