40 BULLETIN 107, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
tablished there for sometime previous to this, for the shallow brush-grown 
reservoir which they inhabited had then been in existence for nearly 20 years. 
On the occasion just mentioned, Mr. Faxon saw or heard at least six or eight 
different birds, one of which wag accompanied by chicks only a few days old, 
and on April 27, 1892, he discovered a nest containing five fresh eggs. 
During the following eight years Great Meadow was frequently visited by 
our local ornithologists, and the manners and customs of the grebes were 
closely studied. One or two birds often appeared in the pond as soon as it 
was free from ice—this sometimes happening before the close of March—and 
by the middle of April the full colony was usually reestablished. It was dif- 
ficult to judge as to how many members it contained, for they were given to 
haunting the flooded thickets, and we seldom saw more than three or four of 
them on any one occasion; but at times, especially in the early morning and 
late afternoon when the weather was clear and calm their loud cuckoo-like 
ealls and odd whinnying outcries would come in quick succession from so 
many different parts of the pond that one might have thought there were 
scores of birds. Probably the total number of pairs did not ever exceed a dozen, 
while during some seasons there were apparently not more than five or six, 
They built their interesting floating nests in water a foot or more in depth, 
anchoring them to the stems of the sweet gale and button bushes, and laying 
from five to eight eggs, which usually were covered by the bird whenever she 
left them. Although a few sets of eggs were taken by collectors, the grebes 
reared a fair number of young every season, and without doubt they would 
have continued to resort to Great Meadow for an indefinite period had not the 
reservoir been abandoned, and its waters almost completely drained in the 
autumn of 1901; since then the bids have ceased, of course, to frequent the 
place. 
The pied-billed grebe is not easily driven from its favorite nesting 
haunts by the encroachments of civilization and is occasionally 
found nesting in suitable localities in thickly settled regions or near 
our large cities. A striking instance of this is shown in Mr, Clinton 
G. Abbott’s (1907) account of the nesting of this species in the Hack- 
ensack Meadows, near New York City, in 1906, where an extensive 
cat-tail swamp offered a congenial home for grebes and gallinules. 
Mr. Arthur T. Wayne (1910) says of its breeding habits in South 
Carolina: 
This is an abundant permanent resident, breeding in fresh-water ponds or 
large rice-field reservoirs, where the water is generally from 4 to 10 feet deep. 
The birds are mated by the last of February, and the nests, which are com- 
menced about the middle of March, are composed of decayed vegetable matter 
anchored to buttonwood bushes or reeds. 
In the North Dakota sloughs, in 1901, we found the pied-billed 
grebe nesting abundantly, in company with canvasbacks, redheads, 
ruddy ducks, and coots, and examined a large number of nests, which 
may be considered as fairly typical of its normal nesting habits 
throughout the greater portion of its breeding range. The depth of 
water in which the nest is located varies greatly, but most of the nests 
are placed in water not over 3 feet deep. The nests are usually an- 
chored to, or built up around or among, dead or growing reeds or 
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