RECREATION 



VOL. XXII. 



MAY, 1905 



No. 5 



NESTS, NESTING AND NESTLI-NGS 



By C. WILLIAM BEEBE 



CURATOR OF ORNITHOLOGY, NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL PARK 



HEN one has lived 

 in the city for a year 

 or two and has be- 

 come absorbed in 

 business and im- 

 pressed with the 

 greatness of human 

 affairs upon the 

 earth, let him go to the woods, find the 

 simplest kind of bird's nest, take it 

 apart and put together the same mate- 

 rials again, placing it in the bush or 

 tree. Then put several small marbles 

 in it and revisit it after the first wind 

 or rain storm. The nest will have van- 

 ished, the marbles disappeared. 



He may indeed take a handful of 

 green, pliant twigs and weave them 

 into a cup-like form which will last 

 a long time ; but one of the chief 

 miracles of nest-building is the tem- 

 porary and fragile character of the 

 structures. By the exquisite judg- 

 ment of the feathered builders, the 

 tiny raft, cup or ball, of grass or 

 sticks of clay, is often exactly adapt- 

 ed to the term of usefulness de- 

 manded. 



We are all familiar with the queer 

 little "dabchick," "grebe" or "hell- 

 diver," as he is variously known, — 



the little duck-like creature which fre- 

 quents our mill-ponds, and many of 

 us have fired at him, only to see him 

 mysteriously vanish, before the shot 

 pellets have reached the spot where, 

 a fraction of a second ago, he was 

 serenely floating. Of all birds this 

 one seems most born of the very 

 water, and indeed we find that this is 

 hardly a mere figure of speech. 



When mother grebe is ready to lay 

 her eggs, she searches out some re- 

 tired spot among the reeds and 

 rushes of a lonely lake, and there 

 scrapes and pushes together a low 

 heap of mud and decayed reeds. Here 

 on this water-logged islet, — this mer- 

 est semblance of a nest, she broods 

 her eggs. A moose splashing among 

 the nearby lily pads may send floods 

 of water over the sitting bird, or the 

 winds may disentangle, the little raft 

 of reeds, sending it scudding to the 

 farther end of the lake, but the bright 

 eyes of the mother bird never falter. 

 She carefully covers her eggs with 

 decayed leaves whenever hunger 

 forces her to leave them. Although 

 she does not weave the reeds, yet in 

 some way they hold together until the 

 last little qrebe crawls to the edere and 



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