DESERT BIED LIFE OBEEHOLSER. 359 
yet sufficiently substantial nest of the dead and floating vegetation, 
molds a depression in the top for the two or three eggs, and moors 
the whole securely to the upright stems of the growing plants or 
leaves it to drift at the impulse of wind and waves. 
A smaller, less sedate, more gayly attired species, the abundant 
American eared grebe lives in these great tule marshes in neighborly 
fashion with the western grebe, and builds a floating nest of typical 
grebe architecture, which is a familiar feature of the place. Wliile the 
eggs are the object of her solicitude, the mother bird is always on the 
watch, and at the approach of any intruder hastily covers her treas- 
ures with the loose decaying vegetation of the nest and slips away; 
but later on, when the appearance of the little family has added to 
her maternal cares, she leads forth her vagrant brood to share with 
them the perils and the possibilities of the little world in which they 
move. 
Multitudes of ungainly, dark-bodied cormorants roam this lake. 
They are awkward enough on land, but perfectly at home on the 
water, and able to swim long distances below the surface. Their 
nests are coarse structures of sticks and tule stems, which occupy 
either convenient niches in the rocks or the branches of low trees, 
and are to be found near those of pelicans, gulls, and herons along 
the eastern side of the lake on rocky islets covered with a growth of 
small willows. 
Quite in contrast to the clumsy cormorant is the airy-winged black 
tern, whose name " water swallow " seems aptly chosen, for in its 
wonderful evolution as it courses the air after insects it recalls to 
mind most of all its smaller namesake of the land. Somewhat ex- 
clusive, too, is the black tern, and in its selection of a nesting place 
it withdraws to a separate part of the marsh. 
South of Smoke Creek Desert in extreme western Nevada, wellnigh 
completely surrounded by low mountains and fed by the clear, cool 
stream of the Truckee, is Pyramid Lake. It is one of the largest and 
deepest of the Great Basin lakes; and in places the shores are pre- 
cipitous, ascending sheer from the water, though seldom to great 
height, while here and there they are adorned with curious masses of 
calcareous tufa, fashioned into great domes or other strange forms. 
Two high, steep, rocky islands are conspicuous, and from the triangu- 
lar, pyramidal shape of the smaller the lake takes its name. 
To this body of water resort regularly and in numbers many species 
of shore birds and waterfowl, as well as land birds that have a fond- 
ness for bold cliffs near the water. A colony of California gulls oc- 
cupies part of the larger island; the clumsy white pelicans also live 
there, and, whether foraging daily along the shores and the marshes 
at the head of the lake or straggling back to pitch their nightly camp. 
