CORMORANT AND OTHER DIVERS 41 



possessed of inordinate appetites. Even the 

 innocent-looking little grebe, or dabchick, can, 

 and does, destroy quantities of fry. I have kept 

 a pair of little grebes and fed them in a large 

 tank. Each bird was given twenty minnows a 

 day, but I found this was quite insufficient and 

 the grebes rapidly lost flesh. 



A year or two before the war Mr. Seth Smith 



wrote a very interesting account in the zoological 



notes of The Field about the feeding of this bird. 



Each grebe was given forty to fifty small fish 



.from one to two inches in length daily. 



Since keeping dabchicks I have examined the 

 contents of a few of these birds in order to arrive 

 at a knowledge of their feeding habits in a wild 

 state. The little grebe has a gizzard as large as 

 that of the black-headed gull, and I have invari- 

 ably found it full of food. 



Whenever small fish are present, the grebe, 

 like all other divers, prefers this form of food. 

 A specimen was shot on the Deben, and con- 

 tained eight recognisable blennies, two to two 

 and a half inches in length, and 258 otoliths of 

 various sizes. It had, therefore, certainly 

 devoured 137 small fish within the previous 

 forty-eight hours. Another specimen contained 



