8 Birds of Colorado 
floating in about eighteen inches of water, and placed in a 
thick reed-bed ; they are built up of broken reeds and 
other debris and fastened round the growing reeds, but 
the whole structure is hardly high enough to keep the 
eggs dry. These, according to Henshaw, were three in 
number, though Smith (90) found four to be more usual. 
They are white in colour and sometimes roughened 
with a chalky deposit, but generally stained and soiled ; 
they measure 1°75 x 1°25. 
When the bird leaves the nest it invariably, if time 
allows, covers up the eggs with grass or other vegetable 
matter, in order to conceal them; and as they both leave 
and return to their nests by diving quietly, Henshaw 
believed that the eggs were partially, at any rate, hatched 
by the heat of the decaying vegetable matter with 
which he found them covered, but it is now generally 
agreed that this is done only for concealment. 
Henshaw was at San Luis Lakes on June 23rd, and 
Aiken found fresh eggs at the same place in July, while 
Dille gives June 19th as an average date for fresh eggs. 
Rockwell has recently published an illustrated account 
of its nesting habits at Barr, near Denver. 
Genus PODILYMBUS. 
Bill very short, deep and strongly compressed ; no crest or ruff, 
but the frontal feathers rather stiff and bristle-like ; tarsus about three- 
fourths the length of the middle toe and claw, and nearly twice the 
culmen. 
Only one species found throughout most of America. 
Pied-billed Grebe. Podilymbus podiceps. 
A.O.U. Checklist no 6—Colorado Records—Ridgway 79, p. 234; 
Morrison 89, p. 147; W. G. Smith 89, p. 138 ; Osburn 90, p. 68 ; Cooke 
97, pp. 18, 50, 191 ; Henderson 03, p. 107; 09, p. 224 ; Rockwell 10, p. 188 
