Pied-tailed The old Grebe kept cruising back and forth within 
Grebes 
• 
about 20 yards of us in open water for five or six minutes, 
tooting incessantly, but not aga.in diving. Finally she swam 
into the button bushes and disappeared. Just before this, 
another Grebe, her mate probably, answered her toot several 
times with a precisely similar call and showed himself near 
us, diving, however, as soon as we caught sight of him. The 
female, while cruising back and forth, sat high on the water 
and carried her neck erect and stretched up to its full 
length. She was in full breeding plumage with black throat 
and gray neck. 
Faxon saw the first Grebes in this pond this season 
Son Aoril ? 1 the dav after the ice went out! Their 
presence is widely known to the people of Lexington and to 
the passengers and trainmen of the railroad which skirts the 
edge of the pond, by most of whom they are called “Dipper 
Ducks". They are so wary, however, and their button bush 
fastnesses are so difficult of access that they are probably 
reasonably safe from persecution. Faxon first found them 
in 1891. Just when they began breeding in this pond is 
unknown to us. 
Least 
Faxon and I to-day heard two Least Bitterns cooing 
in the upper Arlington reservoir where the Grebes breed. 
Bittern 
Hr 
one 
Both were among cat-tails, eves at the inlet, the other on 
an island in the pond about 300 yards from the inlet. The 
latter bird cooed at frequent intervals during the entire 
day. When we first heard him, he was near the southern 
extremity of the island in a bed of broken-down, last year's 
