46 Bird - Lore three Duck's feathers on the ground. Then I began to search, and close by, under a spruce bough which grew out flat along the ground, there was the downy nest with eight eggs. Just then I heard a shout from one of our party, — " Look out ! A ' Shell-Duck' has just flown out of there !" NEST OF RED-BREAbTED MERGANSER In nearly all the numerous ponds there are Horned Grebes breeding, and it would be a fine thing if some one would go into protracted hiding near a nest and make the camera tell the world how the Grebes conduct their domestic arrangements. There are American Bitterns' nests galore in the reeds or rushes border- ing these ponds, and Rusty Blackbirds in the spruces near by, where the ground is swampy. They build nests much like those of the Crow Black- bird or the Robin, and lay by the middle of May, for the young are out of the nests almost invariab'y before the middle of June, cool as it even then is. The Ravens, which build their great stick nests, lined with sheep's wool, in the niches of the cliffs, are much earlier yet, and the young are flying long before we are likely to reach the islands. Small colonies of the Common Tern are quite numerous. I waded out to one on a small islet in a pond, and saw the ground strewn with eggs. Though there was plenty of room for more, I was surprised to find that one pair in the company had built their nest a little way out from shore among the profusion of dead reeds, over the water, exactly after the man-
