May, 1919 A RETURN TO THE DAKOTA LAKE REGION 109 
and their families, a length of Coulee green with water plants. The adults ran 
through them freely, splashing up the water, but two half grown young which, 
on my approach, rushed out of a cane border had to waddle through the thick 
surface weeds, while their anxious parent on the opposite bank turned from 
side to side calling ep, ep, in worried tones as she watched their slow progress. 
A much smaller, red-headed chick, looking as if just out of the nest, fol- 
lowed its—father, let us say—slowly and elaborately through the green mass. 
How could it plow its way through? Did it follow where he had parted the 
weeds? As it fell behind, he kept calling encouragingly, ek-ek-ek-ck-ek and 
waited for it. When the little tot caught up to him it was so hungry that, be- 
tween feedings, it weakly fluttered its tiny finny wings, begging him to hurry. 
The— mother, let us say—was a short distance back down the Coulee with sev- 
eral young in her charge. Three, there seemed to be at first, but more kept 
coming out of the cat-tails until there were seven Redheads in all. One of 
these, however, evidently belonged to other parents, for although I could not 
imagine how any Coots could tell each other apart, it left the six that had 
joined their mother and swam back down the Coulee loudly calling for its own 
parents. When the six had been seen by the father with his one, he swam back 
toward them, and the mother seeing them coming left the six, and swimming up 
to the one little one which had been following its father, was apparently so glad 
to see it that she just had to feed it herself—several times—before she could let 
it go. 
Why should one parent have so many more young to care for than the 
other, I asked myself. Does the mother naturally take the greater responsibil- 
ity for the young? Or, is one parent a more capable and therefore popular pro- 
vider than the other? Or is it after all just a matter of chance following? A 
bit of evidence was supplied at the juncture. A second Redhead came up and 
joined its father and the one brother; but, as if realizing that it had made a 
mistake, stayed only a few moments, quickly swimming back to its mother and 
her five. There surely was no chance about that. Perhaps in this case, though, 
the little fellow wanted to be with his brothers. Who can say? Another bit of 
testimony was stumbled on, one day, when three hairy young were being cared 
for by one parent, though she was devoting herself exclusively to one of them 
at the moment. Presently the other parent swam up and, singular as it looked, 
he too proceeded to feed that one chick. Though it was probably the hungry 
one of the brood—trust parents to know—it certainly did seem unnecessary for 
such a scrap to be fed by two. Each time the old ones elaborately swam away 
from it in opposite directions, picked up food, and swam back to it. Before 
long, however, the little fellow who was in such apparent danger of over-feed- 
ing swam off to the visiting parent and the two went away together. In this 
ease also, the young deliberately (?) changed from one parent to the other. 
When watching the still more unequally divided family, that of five and 
one, | had just made a note of the fact that the adults were getting food from 
the surface or close below—not diving—when the mother as if to testify to the 
danger of generalizations from insufficient data, began to dive. Four times a 
minute was the fastest that I counted, but besides giving the food to the young, 
she took time to shake her wings and pick around from the surface. A parent 
whom I found in another part of the Coulee had four Redheads with her but 
only one hungry enough to stay close by, so she fed him exclusively and rap- 
idly, diving and feeding, diving and feeding, in a very business-like way. I did 
