6 BULLETIN 1196, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
Like other grebes, the present species usually depends upon its 
skill in diving to escape pursuers, but when encountered in shallow 
channels choked with growths of aquatic vegetation it occasionally 
takes wing, when with long neck and large feet outstretched, and on 
small, rapidly beating wings, it presents a most curious appearance. 
Western grebes nest in colonies, building up large, rounded piles 
of aquatic vegetation to form mounds that barely project from the 
water. The eggs, usually two or three in number (sets of five are 
reported), are laid in a slight depression on the top of this mass. 
The down-covered gray young take to the water as soon as hatched 
and swim readily with the fore part of the body submerged. When 
tired they clamber upon the mother’s back under her arching wings, 
and are carried along with their heads projecting through her 
feathers. 
The loud, stirring calls of the adults, one of the pleasant sounds 
of the great western marshes, come to mind whenever the birds 
themselves are considered. 
FOOD. 
Nineteen stomachs of the western grebe, from California, Oregon, 
Utah, and British Columbia, were available for examination in the 
study of its food. These were collected in January, March, April, 
May, September, October, November, and December. Like all other 
grebe stomachs, these, without exception, contained masses of feath- 
ers from the bodies of the birds themselves, and in four, feathers were 
present to the exclusion of all other material. 
Fish remains were present in all but one of the 15 stomachs that 
contained food and, disregarding the feathers universally found, 
made up practically the entire food (100 per cent) of the birds ex- 
amined. A few remains of water boatmen (Corixidae) in one 
stomach, amounting to a mere trace, constituted the only other ani- 
mal food. One individual had eaten a small mass of rootlets, but 
the presence of this vegetable matter, forming only 2 per cent of the 
contents of the single stomach in which it occurred, is considered 
accidental. 
One bird from Okanogan Lake, British Columbia, had eaten two 
Columbia chubs (d/ylochetlus caurinus) about 5 inches long. These 
fishes are said to frequent the spawning beds of salmon in order to 
devour their eggs. Another individual had eaten two other small 
fishes belonging to the same family, the carps (Cyprinidae), but 
these were too far advanced in digestion to allow more certain identi- 
fication. A bird taken near the mouth of Bear River, Utah, had 
eaten two small carp (Cyprinus carpio) and a sucker known locally as 
“mullet” (Catostomus ardens). Another stomach from the same 
locality contained four small carp entire and the remains of four 
more, while in a third were four chubs (Leuciscus lineatus), one of 
which was 4} inches long. 
A grebe from Netarts Bay, Oreg., contained fragments of seven or 
more little smelts(Atherinops affinas) ,and another from near Wilming- 
ton, Calif., had eaten a small California smelt (Atherinopsis cali- 
forniensis). Both of these fishes occur in large schools in shallow 
bays, and when grown have some value as human food. What few 
of the small fry are eaten by western grebes can have no particular 
