DOMESTIC HABITS OF RED-THROATED DIVER. iTS) 
start forward, with an eager motion, lowering, at the same time, 
his bill, till, with the fish in it, he ploughs the water in front of 
him. I cannot see the chick come out to receive the fish, but, a 
moment or two afterwards, the parent returns, accompanied by 
the latter, and the fish is no longer in his bill. The interest of 
this observation lies in the conclusive proof which it seems to 
furnish that each of the parents has a chick to take care of, and 
which, alone, it feeds; for when he came to the mouth of the 
little bay, the male, with his fish in his bill, must have seen the 
other chick with its mother, but, instead of bringing it the fish, he 
went back again, to continue the search for the other. Having 
found it, he delivered the fish, and the chick thus fed was the 
same one that he had singled out to feed in the bay, where it 
had got, as one may say, by accident, away from its usual abiding 
place. Thus what I have long surmised is, by the chance of the 
one chick having changed its place, and neither having seen 
nor been seen by the parent, made now strikingly apparent. 
But this is not the only matter of interest. Having fed his 
chick the male begins swimming down the loch again ; but first 
I must say that, previous to this, on his first coming down at the 
other end of it, his mate had swum out into the entrance of the 
bay, uttering a deep guttural sort of quack, the first note I have 
heard either of the birds utter, whilst down on the loch. She 
then swam back out of my sight again, and the incident seemed 
closed. The male now, however, having fed the chick as de- 
scribed, swims with it down the loch, slowly at first, the chick 
apparently doing all it can to hinder him—constantly swim- 
ming in front of him, and seeming to want him to turn back. 
Embarrassed, but not deterred by these movements, the male 
at length dives, comes up near the entrance of the bay, swims 
on, and there now appears, advancing to meet him, the female. 
Rounding a bend of the shore—for each bird has kept close in— 
the two come opposite, and in full view of, each other, when each 
makes a little flight, and then another, over the water, and as 
they, each time, end the flight, before sinking down again, they, 
as it were, walk on the water, as a Penguin walks on the land, 
bolt upright, with the whole of the white expanse of the 
under surface, from the legs, or almost, upwards, showing—in 
fact, as it would seem, a courting or nuptial pose. This is most 
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