THE CONDOR 



Vol, IX 



more like the fur of a mammal than the skin of a bird. These skins when pre- 

 pared and placed on the market in the form of coats and capes, brought the prices 

 of the most expensive furs. 



A grebe is a bird that is difficult to shoot, because it swims so low in the water 

 and is so quick in its movements. The professional hunters use a special gun that 

 shoots a charge of shot within the area of a foot square at a distance of about forty 

 yards. The favorite way of shooting was from a blind along the channel where 

 the birds went back and forth from the feeding grounds, or many of the hunters 

 thought nothing of going right among the colonies where the birds were nesting. 



Formerly the greatest grebe rookeries were found in the tules on the north 

 side of Tule Lake, but the hunters have left few birds in this locality. The only 

 really large colony that we found was on I^ower Klamath I^ake, and that had probab- 

 ly not been disturbed by hunters. We estimated that there were several thousand 

 grebes nesting about this part of the lyake. A year later, during the summer of 

 1906, Mr. Frank Chapman visited this same locality and found scarcely any of these 



^A^. 













A CORNER IN THE WESTERN GREBE C0I,0NY; ONE BIRD IS STANDING ON ITS NEST 



birds left; for market hunters were camped not far away. 



lyOwer Klamath Lake is a body of water about twenty-five miles long by ten or 

 twelve miles wide. About its sides are great marshes of tules. The whole border 

 is a veritable jungle: extending out for several miles from the main shore is an 

 almost endless area of floating tule islands, between which is a network of channels. 

 Here, where we found the nesting colony of Western Grebes, we had good chances 

 to study the habits of these birds. 



About one of these islands we found the floating grebe nests every few feet 

 apart, and counted over sixty in a short distance. We rowed up to one end and 

 landed and then waded along just inside the thick growth of tules that grew along 

 the edge. From this place, partly concealed as we were, we could look thru the 

 tules and see the grebes swimming and diving near their nests. Across the channel 

 along the edge of the opposite island were man^^ more grebe nests, and some of the 

 birds were sitting on their eggs. 



The nesting habits of the Western Grebe vary somewhat from those of the 



