214 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



came up almost together, each with a substantial quantity of 

 decaying weed in their bills. With this they began swimming 

 towards the stream, but first one (the female) and then the 

 other dropped it in the water again, and the advance continued 

 expeditus. The female led, and seemed more eager than the 

 male, who, as she disappeared into the creek, paused a little 

 before continuing to follow her. I might have augured ill from 

 this, and after having got to my place of observation, command- 

 ing the nest of these birds — who were now quite hidden behind 

 the bank and intervening shoulder of the hill — I waited in vain 

 for their reappearance round the bend of the stream, a little 

 above where it enters the lake. The male, as was so often the 

 case with the Great Crested Grebes I watched, had evidently 

 cooled off. Getting on to the lake side of the hill again, I found 

 him waiting alone, as he had been before, and in the same place, 

 just outside the mouth of the rivulet. After some ten or fifteen 

 minutes he dived up the lake again, and very shortly afterwards 

 the female returned from the creek, and, swimming to where he 

 had but lately been, appeared to wait for him in her turn. After 

 some time, however, as he did not come, she went out into the 

 lake herself, diving and swimming, and I lost sight of her too. 

 It seems as if the birds, when they have had enough of the open 

 water of the lake, or feel some special homeward call, are accus- 

 tomed to repair to this end of it, at the mouth of their stream, 

 where they wait for each other preparatory to swimming up it, 

 to the nest. But what was the meaning of the foregoing incident 

 with the weeds ? A reference to my paper on the domestic habits 

 of the Great Crested Grebe * will show that a pair of the latter acted 

 in precisely the same way, but more fully, inasmuch as each of 

 them took hold of the same piece of weed, and, holding it thus 

 between them, and standing upright in the water, like two Pen- 

 guins, moved backwards and forwards with it, after which, dropping 

 it in the same way, they both swam eagerly to the nest, on which 

 coition was effected. The subsequent conduct of the birds we 

 are now considering will show the same curious apparent rela- 

 tion between two things which one would not suppose were in 

 any way conjoined. 



The following took place between 9.10 and 9.55 a.m. The 

 * 'Zoologist,' 1901, p. 339. 



