HABITS OF THE GREAT CRESTED GREBE. Ill 



brings him back, then we have the nest and a small collection of 

 materials near it, which the male, having once begun, would be 

 likely to add to to a certain extent, never getting it quite out of 

 his mind, so to speak. His occasional hesitation between the two 

 would be quite natural, as natural, I think, as most other hesita- 

 tions either in man or beasts. It is not difficult, then, to imagine 

 the inchoate nest being put to some other purpose, or even that 

 it might be either so put, or become another nest, in the case of 

 one and the same bird or pair of birds ; or that some birds of a 

 species, till the habit had become fixed in one or another direc- 

 tion, might be more prone to do the one thing, and some the 

 other. Thus there would be a fluctuating and personal element 

 — something, I think, should be allowed for the personality of 

 each individual creature. Of course, if such an explanation 

 would account in any degree for a superfluity of nests, or for un- 

 completed nests being put to some other purpose in the case of 

 Grebes, it would do so to the same extent in the case of other 

 birds ; and here we come to the one or more extra nests — usually 

 called "cock-nests" — built by Wrens, and the conflict of evidence 

 or opinion as to whether these extra ones are or are not put 

 to any special purpose. But it is not only Wrens — or, as we 

 have now seen. Grebes — that abandon the nest they have 

 been building, and build another. Blackbirds — and here it is 

 the hen only that builds, though closely attended on by the male 

 — are liable to do the same ; for I watched a building pair most 

 closely this spring, and, when the nest was almost finished, it was 

 abandoned — quite capriciously, as it appeared to me — and another 

 commenced not far from it. For this reason, and from what we 

 know in regard to the Wren, I do not think the destruction of 

 the original nest was the cause of these Grebes building a third 

 one as well as a second. I attribute it to unsteadiness, or what 

 I have called wavering of the instinct — not meaning by this to 

 wrap up ignorance in a phrase, but rather to imply that no 

 specially induced cause need be assumed. As nature can 

 thus act in the female, one might expect her to do so more 

 often, and in a greater degree, in the male, when he is also the 

 builder. 



Before leaving this subject I will just hint the possibility — for 

 here I can do no more — of abandoned nests being the origin of 



Zool. ith Her. vol. V., May, I'JOl. p 



