184 Union Bay 



bills showed plainly. I could see the brown of their eyes in 

 their snaky-looking heads. They uttered their anxious alarm 

 notes, then would submerge and come up near the canoe 

 to watch me again. They are normally very wary and timid, 

 and I suspect that it is only in the first days after the hatch- 

 ing that the old display this boldness. When the young are 

 a few days older they respond to calls and, after they have 

 climbed on the old birds' backs, the whole party heads for 

 the shelter of the rushes. 



The parent birds did not settle down. From time to time 

 they would approach and beat the surface with their wings 

 to produce splashes which sounded like planks being thrown 

 into the water. The noise produced startled me. Air, im- 

 prisoned by the wings, must have been released as they 

 struck the water. The resulting sound was as loud as the ex- 

 plosion of a paper bag. 



Once I had located the young I had no trouble in watch- 

 ing them, for their incessant peeping indicated their exact 

 position. They did not conceal their presence. In such cir- 

 cumstances many birds would flatten out and lie still, but 

 these young grebes did neither. They crawled clumsily about 

 on the pads. The bird of the day before could be easily recog- 

 nized. Its appearance was much different from that of the 

 late arrivals: its down was smoother and its whole appear- 

 ance smarter. Perhaps this was natural, for it had lived sev- 

 eral times as long as the others. It was twen ty-f our . hours old 

 while the other two may have been out of the egg for only 

 three or four. 



It displayed more wariness than the younger birds. When 

 I moved my camera forward it dived and disappeared under 

 the pads, and then I saw it come into the open for a yard or 

 so before the pads concealed it again. I could not relocate it 

 until I heard its peeping. It was close to the canoe. I pushed 

 it out a little way in order to take a picture. It dived again, 

 not a bad performance when I considered that it was not 



