of his wings ; the female, however, paid but little attention to his blandish- 

 ments, as her eye never wandered from the vicinity of the nest. They swam 

 about in the same spot for nearly half an hour, sometimes diving for pieces 

 of green weed, which they tore to pieces on the surface, and sometimes toying 

 with each other. 



Just as my patience was becoming exhausted, the female swam closer 

 inshore, and, after looking cautiously about, she dived. I kept my eyes 

 glued on the nest. Suddenly she appeared about three feet from the nest, 

 but must have caught sight of me, as she dived almost immediately and 

 re-appeared about forty yards out. I noiselessly changed my position, getting 

 further behind the clump of reeds. In about fifteen minutes she suddenly 

 appeared again beside the nest, and, after a hurried look round, got on to it 

 and carefully uncovered the eggs, arranging all the weeds on the nest before 

 she finally turned the eggs with her bill and settled herself on them. The 

 male appeared almost immediately about six feet from the nest, on the side 

 nearest me, with a young water-lily leaf which had not yet unrolled itself; 

 this he deposited on the side of the nest, the female giving it two or three 

 playful dabs with her bill. During the short time that the male was at 

 the nest, he kept up a sort of crooning noise, difficult to describe on paper, 

 but resembling somewhat the syllable ' krrrdw-quaw-qttaw, hrrraw-quaw-qiiam) ',' 

 repeated very slowly over and over again, and continually bobbed his head 

 up and down. After he dived away the female composed herself to rest, and 

 buried her head among her feathers. 



By this time I was getting very cold and stiff, as I had been standing 

 there about two hours, over my knees in water, without waders. Keeping 

 my eye on the sitting bird, I made a slight movement. She jumped up and 

 hurriedly covered up the eggs with some of the weeds on the nest, remaining 

 bolt upright with her head erect, and listening intently as if she had not 

 seen me. On my next movement she dived noiselessly into the water and 

 appeared some sixty yards off right out in the open. 



On the morning of the 3oth there were three eggs in the nest, and on 

 the ist of May another egg was laid. On each occasion I found freshly 

 plucked water-lily leaves on the side of the nest, but no trace of any withered 

 ones ! Can they have been used as food ? 



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