A BIRD CENSUS.
Nothing in the life of our British birds has more astonished me—and, indeed, I have often reported it—than the multiplication of the greater-crested grebes, of which a census is being taken, and a large company of naturalists is now engaged under the eager guidance of Mr. Harrison, of Pembroke College, Cambridge. If the census is nearly as well done as the census of heron, in which Mr. Nicholson took the chief part, it will give material for a notable document ; and difficult though the work may sound, it is not impossible to make it complete. I saw a great deal of this bird last year, chiefly on Norfolk Broads, where it nested successfully, and on London reservoirs, where at least one pair tried to nest, but were defeated by crows or jackdaws. A peculiarly interesting point in its nesting habits is its method of covering the eggs. As soon as you alarm the sitting bird she dives in that strangely smooth, almost oily, way of hers, pulls off a bit of green submerged leaf, often lily leaf, and lays it over the eggs, in the half-floating nest. Some Norfolk natives hold that the leaf not only conceals, but helps to hatch the eggs, as if the grebe were a Brush Turkey, which really does concoct a heating bed.
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