﻿46 Bird - Lore 



three Duck's feathers on the ground. Then I began to search, and close 

 by, under a spruce bough which grew out flat along the ground, there was 

 the downy nest with eight eggs. Just then I heard a shout from one of our 

 party, — " Look out ! A ' Shell-Duck' has just flown out of there !" 



NEST OF RED-BREAbTED MERGANSER 



In nearly all the numerous ponds there are Horned Grebes breeding, 

 and it would be a fine thing if some one would go into protracted hiding 

 near a nest and make the camera tell the world how the Grebes conduct 

 their domestic arrangements. 



There are American Bitterns' nests galore in the reeds or rushes border- 

 ing these ponds, and Rusty Blackbirds in the spruces near by, where the 

 ground is swampy. They build nests much like those of the Crow Black- 

 bird or the Robin, and lay by the middle of May, for the young are out of 

 the nests almost invariab'y before the middle of June, cool as it even then 

 is. The Ravens, which build their great stick nests, lined with sheep's wool, 

 in the niches of the cliffs, are much earlier yet, and the young are flying 

 long before we are likely to reach the islands. 



Small colonies of the Common Tern are quite numerous. I waded out 

 to one on a small islet in a pond, and saw the ground strewn with eggs. 

 Though there was plenty of room for more, I was surprised to find that 

 one pair in the company had built their nest a little way out from shore 

 among the profusion of dead reeds, over the water, exactly after the man- 



