On the following day, July 16, I failed to find either the parent or the young at the nest. The three remaining eggs were not covered. Again on the morning of the seventeenth, the nest held only the three uncovered eggs; but when I skirted the east end of the slough to examine a Sora’s nest, I was startled by the parent Grebe taking wing not far from me. She flew over the farthest part of the slough, but soon returned, after circling a time or two, to the small area of open water, where she alighted with a splashing glide. When on the wing this bird shows very prominent white markings. The white secondaries cause the posterior portion of the wing to show as a prominent white area, and of course the entire under surface of the body, being white, is very conspicuous when the bird wheels. The flight is so duck-like that the flying Grebe might readily be mistaken, at a distance, for a duck.
I waded to the spot whence this bird had taken flight and presently saw the water agitated by some small creature beneath the surface. It was one of the diminutive downy Grebes, floating submerged, head downward, with its forward parts thrust into a mass of filamentous vegetation (algae), while its legs, stretched to their full extent posteriorly, were pointed vertically upward toward the surface of the water. I easily took it up in my hand.
The next day, July 18, at 7:30 P. M., another egg had hatched. The nest was not covered. It contained two eggs and nearly all of the opened shell of the other, which last circumstance was of course unusual. I heard the young bird, and by following the faint sound of its voice found it, in the water, about six or eight feet from the nest. It was small enough to have just emerged from the shell. Its bill was very pink and the naked red spot, or comb, on its forehead very bright, though only slightly raised above the surrounding skin. By the merest chance I discovered a downy young duck within a few feet of the Grebe’s nest. It was not identified. Perhaps it had been attracted by the cry of the little Grebe. The adult Grebes were not seen, either on this visit or on July 20, when I looked for them early in the morning. On the latter date the two eggs and the nest were cold and the orphan above mentioned was dead, on the slope of the nest just above the surface of the water. There was an opening in the top of its skull through which its brain had been removed by some small creature. This nestling had probably never seen its parents but had taken to the water wholly by instinct.
On the evening of July 22, the two eggs were cold and had not been disturbed since my previous visit, at which time their positions had been carefully noted. However one of them was “pipped” and I could distinctly hear the voice of the bird within the shell. A search for the parent Grebes was without avail. A faint voice, at the other side of the water, was detected and was followed several times, but when its author was finally located it proved to be not a Grebe but a recently hatched Sora Rail.
The next morning, although the sun shone upon the nest, the eggs were cold and the fetuses in both of them were dead. No birds were seen. My last visit, on the evening of July 24, yielded no further result. But I noted now, that there was no water around the nest. It was stranded upon a mud-bar. This was undoubtedly the cause of forced abandonment of the nest. The Grebes were unable to reach it by a water route, and no other mode of travel was possible to them. A search around the water area, now very small and shallow, gave no further evidence. The Grebes were never seen again.
In reviewing the account of these observations certain groups of data suggest themselves for summarization:
It is interesting to note that only six days elapsed between the removal of the first set of eggs and the deposition of the first egg in a new nest.
The period of incubation is twenty-four or twenty-five days, as shown in the following table of dates, noted at the second nest:
| Egg No. | Date Laid | Date Hatched | Incubation Period in days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | June 19 (?) | July 13 | 24 |
| 2 | June 21 | July 15 | 24 |
| 3 | June 22 or 23 | July 17 or 18 | 25 |
| 4 | June 24 | July 22, (Pipped) | Fetus died |
| 5 | June 26 | Fetus died | |
It will be observed that the fourth egg was alive and on the point of hatching, twenty-eight days after it was deposited, but this cannot be considered normal, since the egg had been deprived of the parent heat for several days. It seems remarkable that the fetus survived the cool nights.