THE MARSHES OF MALHEUR 109 



see from island to island ahead of us as we pad- 

 dled along. 



This was on Monday. It was on Thursday the 

 week before that the wardens had found the col- 

 ony; and now, as we came out of the mouth of 

 the Blitzen, we ran straight into a grebe colony 

 of over a hundred nests that was not there at all 

 four days before. One of the wardens, who was 

 in the canoe with us, thought we must be off the 

 course. But here were his knots in the tules. The 

 nests had been built, all of them, since Thursday, 

 and most of them were already with eggs. 



There must be some mistake, I thought, and 

 turned to watching the birds ; for it was not the 

 nests that interested me half so much as the anx- 

 iety of the grebes at discovering us. Every one 

 began hurriedly pulling the wet tule stems and 

 milfoil of the nest over her eggs to hide them 

 before we should come up, working against her 

 fears, and at the risk of her life, to save her 

 eggs — to protect the seed of the race ! 



A racial instinct, you say, only a race act, every 

 bird doing as every other bird did that had eggs. 

 True, but here, as with the murres on Three-Arch 

 Rocks, there was plainly individual action, deep 



