Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/111

and climb to the warm, dry back of its parent, but it can swim as soon as it has left the shell if necessary. Certainly, for some time, it seems to object to the water, and whenever it can it seeks the parental steed, snuggling down in the cradle formed by the slightly elevated wings. It has often been stated that the parent bird, if danger threatens, takes the young down beneath its wings, but I have never seen this done. When the young is on the back it can be held in place by the paternal or maternal scapulars or wings, but as a rule the little one, when not so held, comes bobbing up, astonished and doubtless much annoyed, when its parent has given it an unexpected ducking. At all times it is very much a mother's spoilt baby, following her about with incessant squeaky demands for attention. As it grows it gets a little more independence, but it is quite as big as the adult bird before it ceases this continuous call for food. Its early dives are very superficial, and it may be traced as it swims for a few yards under water by the ripple on the surface. Belated nesting is too frequent on the meres, where early broods frequently meet with disaster; it is no uncommon sight to see young birds still squeaking after their betters in September or October. Egg-robbing by boys, and, in spite of the careful covering, by jays, crows, and other birds, doubtless explains the failure of many an early brood; but when the young are hatched they are in even greater danger from the pike which lurk in the reeds close to their floating domicile. Four eggs is common—one young bird, a survivor, only too frequent. And yet the great crested grebe holds its own on the pike-haunted Cheshire waters, and twenty or thirty birds, even more, are not infrequent on the water; on one mere, at any rate, a dozen or a score of nests might be discovered in its reedy marginal belt. The bird is certainly not diminishing in numbers in this its ancient home.