SOMETHING ABOUT GREBES 
Learned at a Summer Camp in Wyoming 
BY LOTTIE J. CARROLL 
Pie Ue WERE camped by 
4 the shore of a large 
rl alkaline lake in one of 
Bal the wildest parts of 
Wyoming and, seem- 
ingly, one of the loneli- 
est, yet we soon found 
we had plenty of com- 
pany; for the first night after we pitched our 
tent we got but little sleep for the noise of 
the different waterfowl that were nesting 
in the rushes. 
We soon, however, became accustomed 
to their wild music, and learned to dis- 
tinguish the cries of different species. Some- 
times it would be the hollow booming of 
the bittern or ““mud-pump,” as the hunters 
called it, because the note is like the words 
“Mud-pump, mud-pump.” At other times 
the quack of a mallard, or the note of a 
teal or of a yellow-leg sandpiper. But 
mixed with these occasional cries, there 
was one, incessant day and night—a shrill 
note, or rather chorus of cries, as from 
many throats, of “‘Coy-eet! coy-eet! coy- 
eeto!” At first we could not make out 
from which of the many inhabitants of the 
lake these strange sounds came, till one 
day, carefully scanning the surface, we saw 
little heads and necks bobbing up in every 
direction; nothing but heads and necks, the 
bodies seeming to be quite under water, 
and from these little heads came the mys- 
terious cries. We recognized in the little 
duck the grebe, whose soft, white breasts 
so often (more’s the pity) adorn the hats 
of the gentler sex. I became much interested 
in these little swimmers and would often 
steal up and lie at full length on the bank 
watching them. One day I surprised a 
band of them right below the bank. At 
sight of me they instantly dived, and in the 
clear water I could see their forms, like 
fish, swimming rapidly amongst the stems 
of the water-weed, using their short wings 

as a fish does its fins, and also propelling 
themselves by their webbed feet. 
The hunters one day made a good-sized 
flat-bottomed boat out of some boards 
lying around camp, calked the cracks 
between the boards with rags and tacked 
tin sheets from melted meat cans on the 
knot-holes, whilst I painted a name on the 
stern. They carried the result with great 
glee to the lake and launched it. It floated! 
After exploring every nook and cranny 
of the lake, the men made a raid upon the 
rushes by the side of the water, where a 
colony of grebes had built their nests. 
The result was that in the evening when 
they returned to camp they brought back 
a pail full of grebe eggs, and some were 
immediately cooked for supper. The grebe’s 
egg is colored a very pale greenish white 
and is about an inch and a-half long. The 
yolk is a dark orange and of a rich, delicate 
flavor. ; 
One lovely, calm morning, I took the 
“boat” and paddled out onto the lake, with 
the help of a long-handled shovel! The 
water was clear as crystal and I could look 
down to the bottom and see the water-weeds 
growing up from below like bamboos or 
horsetail rushes. As I neared the center, 
‘there was a grand splashing from the 
hundreds of frightened grebes. As their 
short wings only allow of a very low flight, 
they scud over the surface like a ricochetting 
cannon-ball, playing dick-duck-drake. 
On nearing the spot they had left, a 
pretty sight presented itself. ‘These prudent 
little fowl, after the late raid made on their 
eggs by the hunters, perceiving that their 
castles among the reeds were no longer safe, 
had forsaken their nests in the rushes near 
the shore, ‘“‘put out to sea,” and built 
some fifty or sixty little floating homes on 
the smooth surface of the middle of the lake, 
anchoring them by strands of eel-grass to 
the stems of the water weeds growing on 
