64 THE CONDOR Vol. IV young were lying where some vandals had s.hot them from the nests. Three species of grebes were breed- ing in the lake, the pied-billed the least common, the cared the most numerous, and the western. (d?chmophorus occiden- talis) the most conspicuous of them all. Of the dozens of nests seen I could never find one ;vith the old grebe on. although the eggs were usually warm. They were sometimes covered, some- times bare and hastily abandoned. Those of the western grebe were easily recognized by their larger size, but in other ways did not differ frotn those of the cared grebe. They floated on two to four feet of water, the soggy stems ,.,, ,.,",
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PHOTO BY VERNON BAILEY. BLACK T[RN'$ MIST ON TULl RAFT, and rotten vegetation of the nest barely raising the saucer-shaped top where the eggs rested above the surface. While I was photographing a nest the old birds would sometimes come noiselessly up from below the surface of the still water and watch me with their little fiery eyes for a moment and then dis- appear, but they usually-_kept at a safe distance. A brood of the little black chicks of the cared grebe was surprised in open water and while one of the old birds hurried them into the rules the other swam boldly out to meet me. The coots' nests were abundant but while resting in the water they were partly supported by the standing rules and were higher and drier than the grebes' nests. Well out from shore where the water was waist deep a colony of Forster terns were breeding on a raft of floating rule stems, and half a mile up the side of the lake a colony of black terns had their nests on a sim- ilar raft, the rusty spotted eggs match- ing the old brown rule stems to perfec- tion. A flock of about 500 Caspian terns often gathered to feed along one of the sandy beaches and then scattered out to some rocky islands where they were apparently breeding' with the gulls. Ruddy ducks had their nests in the rules, half floating like those of the coots; cinnamon teal were breeding in the dry marshes; and mallards, gadwall, and shovellers were seen along shore, but no nests found. This glimpse of the corner of One lake in the breeding season could be almost dupli- cated in a hundred other lakes of the region. In the past four years many thousand grebe skins have been ship- ped from this one lake, and the skin and plume hunting business has spread over the Great Basin country. A few years ago market hnnt- ers visited these lakes when the young ducks were nearly full grown and the old ducks moulting and unable to fly, loading their wagons with them for the market. While the game laws have put a stop to the open wholesale slaugh- ter of ducks out of season most of the other birds, just as xvorthy of protec- tion, are left unguarded. The white pelicans have been driven from many of their breeding grounds. The most beau- tiful species of our grebes have been woefully thinned in nmnbers, and un- less some protection is afforded the birds these lakes will soon be a veritable part of the desert.
