192 COLYMBID^. 



pidity with wliicli the httle grebe can emerge, and again conceal 

 itself when alarmed, is remarkable. The leap of a trout is scarcely 

 more instantaneous. They hunt much in pairs. When undisturbed, 

 they seldom remain below so long as half a minute.""^ Sir 

 William Jardine was once witness to the motions of this species 

 under water, and observes that, " when moving straight forward 

 it is propelled by the wings, a sort of flight, but when turning, 

 and, we presume, when seeking its food, it has an easy, gliding 

 motion, feet and wings being used as occasion requires, sometimes 

 on one side and sometimes on the other, and we were reminded 

 of the graceful gliding motions of the otter, where every turn 

 seems given with perfect ease, at the same time with great acti- 

 vity and quickness.^'t This comparison will be appreciated by 

 those who have witnessed the elegantly graceful turns of the 

 otter in his pond at the Zoological Garden, Regent^s Park, 

 London, where they can be seen to admirable advantage. Mr. 

 R. Ball, at one of his zoological lectures in DubHn, exhibited a 

 little grebe at which fourteen shots were fired before it was 

 secured ! 



During frost, I once met with tliis species swimming near the 

 shore in Belfast Bay, when the tide was smooth as a mirror. On 

 another occasion, a little grebe was, in severe weather, shot be- 

 neath one of the arches of the Long Bridge here. On the 18th 

 of November, 1841, after three days' frost, severe for this early 

 period of the winter, and when a thaw had commenced, one of 

 these birds was shot in Dunbar's Dock, Belfast, and another was 

 seen in the same vicinity : on examination of its stomach I found 

 the remains of vegetable matter, with a few small shells. Lacuna 

 quadrifasciata, Rissoa ulva, and the very young of LiUorina rudis. 



The stomach of one of these birds, examined by me in Sep- 

 tember, was fiUed with the remains of a few three-spined stickle- 

 backs [Gasterostei), Crustacea, and aquatic insects, among which 

 was a perfect boat-fly {Notonecta). Another, killed on the 1st of 



* Mr, J. Poole. 



f ' Brit. Birds,' vol. iv. p. 210. The whole account of this bird, as observed by 

 the author in the south of Scotland, is very interesting. 



