. Nests and eggs of birds found breeding in Australia and Tasmania . ast they lly. I sawseveral of them on clay-pans three hundred miles from the coast, in North western Australia, andthey were numerous at Lake Way, Western Australia. Dr. Lonsdale Holden wrote from North-western Tasmania as follows:—On the 22ndAugust, iSg2, a Tippet Grebe {Iodiicfs niislralis) was shot off the wharf at Circular Head, andbrought to me ; it was a female. Four more were seen off the wharf the following day, and one,an adult male, was also shot and brought to me. In October, iSyS, I watched one fishing closein sho
. Nests and eggs of birds found breeding in Australia and Tasmania . ast they lly. I sawseveral of them on clay-pans three hundred miles from the coast, in North western Australia, andthey were numerous at Lake Way, Western Australia. Dr. Lonsdale Holden wrote from North-western Tasmania as follows:—On the 22ndAugust, iSg2, a Tippet Grebe {Iodiicfs niislralis) was shot off the wharf at Circular Head, andbrought to me ; it was a female. Four more were seen off the wharf the following day, and one,an adult male, was also shot and brought to me. In October, iSyS, I watched one fishing closein shore off the west end of Bellerive Beach. It constantly dixed and reappeared nearly in thesame place. The food of this species consists of small salt and fresh-water molluscs, crustaceans andsmall (ish, to which is sometimes added the softened ends of stalks of fresh-water plants. The nest is an irregular-shaped open stiucture formed of dead water plants and weeds, builton the surface of the water of some lagoon or backwater, a Hoating mass attached to a few reeds. TIPPKT GRKHE. PODKIPKS. 391 or the twigs of some fallen branch, just sufficient to keep it from lieing swept away, and inwhich usually five or six eggs are deposited. When sitting the female covers herself up withthe outer portion of the nest, and before leaving carefully covers up her eggs with the samematerial, and diving close to the nest reappears again on the surface of the water ten or twelveyards away. The eggs are usually five, but vary to seven in number for a sitting, elongate oval orelliptical in form, when fresh the shell lieing more or less evenly or irregularly coated with whitelime, in some of the latter specimens portions of the pale bluish-white, or true colour of the shell,is revealed, or again it might be tlie result of a scratch hy the birds feet on the soft lime. Afew days, however, in the thoroughly water-saturated nest and the eggs are soon of a pale-brownhue, and from this tint they may be fou
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