64 
THE CONDOR 
1 Vol. IV 
young were lying where some vandals 
had shot them from the nests. 
Three species of grebes were breed- 
ing in the lake, the pied-billed the least 
common, the eared the most numerous, 
and the western, {Mclnnophorus occiden- 
talis) the most conspicuous of them all. 
Of the dozens of nests seen I could 
nev^er find one with the old grebe on, 
although the eggs were usually warm. 
They were sometimes covered, some- 
times bare and hastily abandoned. 
Those of the western grebe were easily 
recognized by their larger size, but in 
other ways did not differ from those of 
the eared grebe. They floated on two 
to four feet of water, the soggy stems 
and rotten vegetation of the nest barely 
raising the saucer-shaped top where the 
eggs re.sted above the surface. While 
1 was photographing a nest the old 
birds would sometimes come noiselessly 
up from below the surface of the still 
water and watch me with their little 
fiery eyes for a moment and then dis- 
appear, but they usually kept at a safe 
distance. A brood of the little black 
chicks of the eared grebe was surprised 
in open water and while one of the 
old birds hurried them into the tules 
the other swam boldly out to meet me. 
The coots’ nests were abundant but 
while resting in the water they were 
partly supported by the standing tules 
and were higher and drier than the 
grebes’ nests. Well out from shore 
where the water was waist deep a 
colony of Forster terns were breeding 
on a raft of floating tule stems, and half 
a mile up the side of the lake a colony 
of black terns had their nests on a sim- 
ilar raft, the rusty spotted eggs match- 
ing the old brown tule stems to perfec- 
tion. A flock of about 500 Caspian 
terns often gathered to feed along one 
of the sandy beaches and then scattered 
out to some rocky islands where they 
were apparently breeding with the 
gulls. Ruddy ducks had their nests in 
the tules, half floating like those of the 
coots; cinnamon teal were breeding in 
the dry marshes; and mallards, 
gadwall, and shovellers were 
seen alongshore, but no nests 
found. 
This glimpse of the corner 
of one lake in the breeding 
season could be almost dupli- 
cated in a hundred other lakes 
of the, region. In the past 
four years many thousand 
grebe skins have been ship- 
ped from this one lake, and 
the skin and plume hunting 
business has spread over 
the Great Basin country. 
A few years ago market hunt- 
ers visited these lakes when 
the young ducks were nearly full 
grown and the old ducks moulting 
and unable to fly, loading their 
wagons with them for the market. 
While the game laws have put a 
stop to the open wholesale slaugh- 
ter of ducks out of season most of the 
other birds, just as worthy of protec- 
tion, are left unguarded. The white 
pelicans have been driven from many of 
their breeding grounds. The most beau- 
tiful species of our grebes have been 
woefully thinned in numbers, and un- 
less some protection is afforded the birds 
these lakes will soon be a veritable part 
of the desert. 
