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Show Floating Nests. When mother grebe is ready to lay her eggs she searches out some retired spot, among the reeds and rushes of a lonely lake, and there she scrapes and pushes together a low heap of mud and decayed reeds, says C. William llecbe, in Recreation. Here on the water-logged Islet this merest semblance of a nest she broods her eggs, A moose splashing among the nearby Illy pads may send floods of water over the sitting bird, or the winds may disentangle the little lit-tle raft of reeds, sending It scudding to the farther end of the lake, but the bright eyes of the mother bird never falter. She carefully covers her eggs with decayed leaves whenever hunger hun-ger forces her to leave them. Although Al-though she does not weave tho reeds, yet In some way they hold together until the last little grebe crawls to the edge and plunges off head-first. Or ho may leap upon his mother's back and thus udo proudly forth Into the world, exchanging the soaked, decayed de-cayed leaves of his cradl for her feathers. |
