DIVERS, GREBES, AND CORMORANTS. 161 



places. The nest is always made upon the ground, 

 and seldom very far from the water, to which the 

 frightened bird can retire readily. An island 

 covered with short herbage is always preferred in 

 Scotland, but in some places the bare shingly beach 

 is selected. This nest, often of the slightest con- 

 struction, is made of stalks of plants, roots, and 

 all kinds of drifted vegetable fragments, lined with 

 grass. Sometimes no nest whatever is made. 

 The two eggs are narrow and elongated, olive- or 

 rufous-brown, sparingly spotted and speckled with 

 blackish-brown and paler brown. The sitting bird 

 is ever on the alert to slip off into the water at 

 the first alarm ; and sometimes both birds will fly 

 round and round in anxiety for the fate of their 

 treasured eggs. A movement seawards is soon 

 taken when the young are sufficiently matured. 

 This Diver has a wide geographical range outside 

 our limits, extending across Europe and Asia to 

 Japan and North-west America, perhaps as far as 

 Hudson Bay. American authorities, however, insist 

 upon the specific distinctness of most of the Black- 

 throated Divers found in Alaska, and have named 

 this form C. pacificus. 



RED-THROATED DIVER. 



Smallest of the British Divers, the present species, 

 the Colymbus septentrionalis of Linnaeus and modern 

 authorities, is also the best known and the most 

 widely distributed. It is also the least showy in 



