PIED- BILLED GREBE. 
213 
swam back to the river without reappearing till it was in the 
middle of the stream. The bird must have covered at least a 
hundred yards beneath the surface, and looked like a large frog 
more than a bird. When fishing on the Thames, T have more 
than once seen these birds swimming at a considerable depth 
in the clear water below me, and have directed their onward 
course with a punt-pole. 
Nest. — A gruesome mass of wet reeds and water-plants, with 
sometimes, in shallow water, a foundation of water-weeds 
reaching to the bottom. 
Eggs. — Four to six in number. Mr. Robert Read remarks : 
— “ The eggs of birds taken on the Thames, when newly laid, 
are of a pure bluish-white, and become, later on, stained to a 
deep dirty yellow, but they are never of such a deep brown as 
the peat-stained eggs from some of the Scotch moorland 
lochs.” Axis, I- 35 -I -55 inch ; diam. o-ps-i'i. 
THE THICK-BILLED GREBES. GENUS FODILYMBUS. 
Podilymbus, Less. Traits, i. p. 595 
Type, P. podicipes (Linn. ). 
This American genus differs from the other Grebes which 
we have been considering, in having a remarkably stout bill, 
its depth being more than half of the length of the culmen. 
I. THE PIED-BILLED GREBE. PODILVMBUS PODICIPES. 
Colymbus podicipes, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 223 (1766). 
Podilymbus podiceps, ■, Sharpe, P. Z. S. iSSi, p. 734, 
Harting, Zool. 1881, p. 334; Saunders, Manual, p. 710, 
note (1889). 
Adult Male. — General colour above blackish brown ; the wing- 
coverts rather lighter brown than the liack ; quills light brown 
with dusky tips to the primaries, the secondaries white for the 
greater part of the inner web j innermost secondaries like the 
back ; tail dark brown ; crown of head and hind-neck blackish- 
brown, as also the lores ; sides of face and ear-coverts ashy- 
grey, with dusky centres to the feathers; cheeks white ivith 
dusky shaft-lines, extending down to the middle of the throat 
