November, 1902. I THE CONDOR ?2 9 attracted my attention was a piece of skin from the neck of a grebe. It was tacked upon the wall, showing the sil- very gray of the sides of the head, the glossy black of the median portion of the head, occiput, and hind neck, and the dull rufous of the remaining por- tions of the neck. Here was a find, tangible evidence of the presence of Col,mbus holboelli, promising an inter- esting outcome, and I lost no time in getting among the reeds of the sub- merged region: Frequently in the night there was wafted across the open water an out- burst of cries from the uneasy colonists of the swamp, the voice of C. holboelli mingled with the louder cackle of the loon, to which the former is not greatly unlike. It is a coarse, prolonged nasal quonk, the nasal quality being most pro- nounced, the intonation being very sug- gestive of the braying of a donkey. In- deed, the natives call this grebe the "jack diver," and anyone familiar with the nasal volume of tone produced by C. hol&elli will readily admit the appro- priateness of the popular name. The margin of the lake proper is marked by a growth of buck brush. As we approached the swamp, we could hear occasional calls from the covert of buckbrush. The birds themselves were not in sight, except two riding jauntily far along the shore near the mouth of a little mountain stream, where they were accustomed to go to take a meal of mountain trout at this very convenient larder. The birds thus seen out in the open water always kept well beyond range of the shotgun, though we fre- quently enjoyed shooting at them with .22 longs. They swim with greatest ease, never allowing us to decrease the distance between thetn and our little skiff, though seemingly they used no effort to escape us, until alarmed by the fusilade of .22's, when they dived and made long stretches under water. As we pushed among the reeds in the swamp, the grebes could be heard quonkin? in the buckbrush or beyond it, where it grew in thickets several rods in width, quite impenetrable with a boat and standing in two feet .or more of water. The birds were doubtless chuckling at our disadvantage, for time and again as we skirted the bushes we were saluted by those outbursts of riding quonks, and it seemed that the birds.were just beyond the coverts. Upon rounding the bushes, however, we could see the grebes, always in twos, far out on the open water, showing that the call has a very marked ventril- oquial effect, or else the effect was due to the conductivity of the water. Of one feature, though, there was no doubt, for as the grebes sat well erect in the water, their red necks reflected the sun- light as the birds turned this way and that in their buoyant movements, and identification would have been no surer if one of the many .22's had found a 10dgment in the intended mark. C. hol&elli manifested a very playful disposition in their movements on the open water. They would emit an out- burst of quonk, enough to give credit to five times the number of individuals, and then run over the water with flut- tering wings and spattering feet, as though indulging in racing. Two would thus play on the water, while perhaps two more far over the water would in- dulge in like antics. I do not recall seeing more than two grebes together on the open water. Finding it quite impracticable to search fully the clumps of buckbrush, out of which the birds emerged upon our invasion of the swamp, we turned our attention to the patches of old reeds here and there in the marsh, and to- ward the close of the first tooming's work, a nest was found, June 4. It was among tall reeds in the edge of a clump surrounded by open water. Like nests of the pied-billed grebe (Podilymbus podiceps) that I have examined, this nest was made of black decaying grasses, with which a few pieces of green reeds
