1893  
May 18 
(no 8) 
East Lexington, Mass.                                                                                                              
  Still another cry was a monosyllabic tool  something                                                                        
like a short blast on a deep - toned willow whistle.
this we heard only from a bird, presumably a
female, which was accompanied by several young and
Faxon thinks that it is given only by the mother
bird when anxious about her young. He has heard
it several times before, always from a bird with young.
It is wholly unlike the other cries and in
tone reminded me of one of the calls of the Gallinules.
On this ocasion the the Greebe started out of some
button bushes near a mass of floating vegetation which
looked like a Greebe's nest but which  we could not
get very close to with clumsy boat. She swam
a few yards and then dove leaving a chick on the
surface. The chick then dove and soon afterwards
came up nearly the same place when the
mother bird also reappeared and swam directly to him.
When she reached him she stopped and turned and
he at once scrambled under her closed wing to her back.
I now saw that there were least two or three
more young on her back nearly over the flanks. She
kept tips of her wings folded over them partially
concealing them but they raised their heads at
intervals and writhed or nested about. Their bills
appeared to be white with a dark bar near the tip.
They were covered with black or blackish down &
were about the size of nearly hatched chickens.
the old Greebe kept cruising back & forth within about
20 yards of us in open water for five or six minutes
tooting incessantly but not again diving. Finally she swam
into the bottom bushes & disappeared. Just before
[margin]Pied-billed 
Greebes.[/margin]