GREAT CRESTED GREBE. 243 



am not sure whether it was the male or female which 

 was on the nest when the noise was first heard. My 

 idea is that the fight may have been occasioned by 

 another grebe attacking the female, in which case the 

 male would at once go to the rescue. It was a 

 wonderful sight, and I could not have believed grebes 

 possessed the power to make such a noise. This fight 

 happened in the middle of May." There was another 

 grebe's nest at the corner of the shallow bay, at the 

 bottom of which the nest referred to was situated, and 

 probably Mrs. Buxton's explanation of the affair is the 

 correct one, but the great crested grebe has always been, 

 and rightly, I think, regarded as very sociable in its 

 breeding habits and it seems difficult to account for 

 this sudden fracas, which was not repeated. 



My experience, as I have said in a note in the second 

 edition of his "Fauna" (p. 127), differs from Mr. 

 Lubbock's with regard to this bird's supposed habit of 

 hiding when its nest is approached. On Hoveton 

 Broad and other places I have often been directed to the 

 site of the nest by the anxiety of the old birds, and on the 

 19th of May, of the present year (1889), two lovely birds 

 remained anxiously swimming up and down within half- 

 a-dozen yards while I was inspecting their nest, which 

 contained three eggs and a freshly hatched young one. 

 Nothing but the desire to ascertain the temperature of 

 the nest could have induced me to disturb them at so 

 critical a period of their existence as the birth of their 

 first-born, and they loudly expressed their dissatisfaction 

 at my intrusion, erecting their crests and swimming up 

 and down in a state of great excitement. The young 

 bird was still wet from the egg, but it struggled 

 vigorously in my hand ; it was a pretty little striped thing, 

 with the triangular bare patch of skin on the forehead a 

 brilliant scarlet. 



Notwithstanding the number of eggs produced by 

 the loon I do not remember (possibly owing to the depre- 

 dations of the pike) ever to have seen more than two 

 young ones following the parents. When very young 

 they are easily attracted by any strange object, and it 

 is very interesting to watch the anxiety of the old 

 female as she hurries backward and forward just within 

 2n2 



