196 ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



Range outside the British Islands. The present species is 

 found over the greater part of the Old World, breeding in 

 most countries of Europe and the Mediterranean basin, as far 

 north as the Baltic provinces, Denmark, and Southern Sweden, 

 across Siberia to Japan and China, and south to Australia and 

 New Zealand. It occurs in winter throughout the Indian 

 Peninsula in localities suited to its habits, but the African 

 Great Crested Grebe seems to be different, and is known as 

 Lophathyia infiiscata (Salvad). It has not been recorded from 

 any part of North America. 



Habits. Open waters are the principal localities affected by 

 this Grebe during the breeding season, when its nest may 

 be found far from the shore, a floating mass among the 

 reeds. When the nest is approached, the birds generally swim 

 away at a great rate, almost as fast as a boat can pursue them, 

 and, on the latter appearing to gain on them, they take refuge 

 in diving, seldom taking wing, though when called upon they 

 are birds of strong flight, and fly with necks outstretched like 

 a duck or a diver. Seebohm writes : " Its food is entirely 

 procured in the water, and consists of water-beetles and other 

 aquatic insects, small fish, small frogs and molluscs. The 

 seeds and tender shoots of aquatic plants are also often found 

 in its stomach ; but instead of small stones or gravel, numbers 

 of its own feathers, plucked from the ventral region, are mixed 

 with its food. It is not known that this curious habit, which 

 is more or less common to all the Grebes, is intended to assist 

 digestion, but it has been remarked by many ornithologists in 

 widely different localities Nauman (father and son), Meves 

 (father and son), Yarrell, Thompson, Macgillivray, &c. Its 

 ordinary alarm-note is a loud, clear kek, kek ; but at the pairing- 

 time another note, the call-note, may be heard a loud, 

 grating, guttural sound, like the French word croix. 



"The Great Crested Grebe is decidedly a gregarious bird. 

 When I was stopping at Stolp, in Pomerania, in 1882, Dr. 

 Holland was kind enough to pilot me to the Lantow See, 

 a lake about four square miles in extent, and surrounded on 

 three sides by pine forests. At one end of the lake was a 

 large bed of reeds, and as we rowed towards it we saw quite a 

 little fleet of Great Crested Grebes sail out. It was a most 



