ORNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION IN ICELAND. 67 



development which has not yet been recorded, it seems probable 

 indeed that all the members of the family have the same habits. 

 After a short interval, filled up in these various ways, this 

 pair of Grebes swam down the stream, but at a certain bend of 

 it, in which was the next defined patch of rushes, the male of 

 another pair that had made these their headquarters made a 

 little bull-like rush out from them at the intruding male, as he 

 chose to consider him, holding his head down on the water, and 

 advanced like the ram of a battleship. The latter was put to 

 flight — actual flight for a little — for some way down the stream, 

 and then went on into the lake. The female was not interfered 

 with, nor yet when sometime afterwards she approached a 

 narrow, fringing belt along the shore, opposite the larger one. 

 She then swam back, up the stream, into her own home-waters, 

 where I lost sight of her, for after keeping, a little, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the nest, she left it, and went on. Some time after 

 this — about 10 a.m., to be precise — I saw the male of the other 

 pair of Grebes swim from his clump of rushes to the opposite 

 side of the stream, and there, just off the shore, take up some 

 weed or other material in his beak, and return with it to the nest. 

 This he did several times, at short intervals, sometimes diving, 

 but, as it seemed to me, more as on his way to one bank or the 

 other than to get weeds from the bottom. This he may sometimes 

 have done, however, though, if so, they can have been but small 

 pieces, but, as a rule, he either took weeds from the surface, or 

 pulled the growing flags. I kept expecting the female to come and 

 share in the work, and more eagerly, but I only thought I saw her 

 do so once, and now doubt if I did at all. I saw, however, both 

 birds mount the nest, in succession, and then one of them again, 

 at short intervals. Since I had been given to understand that 

 there were no eggs, yet, in any of the nests of these Grebes, this 

 only suggested to me that the birds were still building, and kept 

 getting on to the nest, to arrange the materials they were 

 bringing to it, especially as I thought I once saw the female 

 doing so. Nevertheless remembering my experience with the 

 Great Crested Grebe when in Suffolk, I determined to try a long 

 and difficult stalk down the side of the hill on which I was, and 

 over a considerable stretch of flat, tussocky grassland, to the 

 bank of the stream itself, if possible, in order to watch the birds 



