. A REM.\RK.\BI,Y IE.\ DI\ liR SNAPPING AT A;, i; . ij. LHai (THE WRITER). pool. Almost at once she left the nest, made towards the cock, and swam round him several times with her neck extended in front of her—a snake-like pose, but one rigid with excitement. However, he was un- responsive. Soon after, she gave what I call the "; The bird dives with a flick, sending a shower of spray into the air (as opposed to the noiseless submergence of serious diving for food), to emerge only a few feet away, alwa^^s close to its mate. This was repeated four or five times, and s
. A REM.\RK.\BI,Y IE.\ DI\ liR SNAPPING AT A;, i; . ij. LHai (THE WRITER). pool. Almost at once she left the nest, made towards the cock, and swam round him several times with her neck extended in front of her—a snake-like pose, but one rigid with excitement. However, he was un- responsive. Soon after, she gave what I call the "; The bird dives with a flick, sending a shower of spray into the air (as opposed to the noiseless submergence of serious diving for food), to emerge only a few feet away, alwa^^s close to its mate. This was repeated four or five times, and stimulated the cock to a little similar diving. I have since found that this splash-diving is always associated with excitement (sometimes with quite other forms of excitement, as when one very tame bird employed it in anger when I drove her off her nearly-hatching eggs), and seems to be especially used as a stimulus by one bird of the pair—it may be either male or female—to key up the emotions of the other. Immediately after- wards they swam together to a low bank of green moss, onto which the cock scrambled. He stood upright, stamped alternately with his feet, and sank down to rest. I found later that he was sitting on a rudiment- ary nest, a " cock's nest," such as also is built by the Crested Grebes ; and found a similar cock's nest on the other nesting-pool that I was able to investigate thoroughly. The cocSv picked at the moss, and seemed to be building pieces of it into the " ; The hen mean- while, although the water was scarcely deeper than herself, was giving splash-dives over and over again. On a subsequent visit to the same place she occupied herself in ducking under, pulling up great pieces of moss from the bottom, throwing them aimlessly over her shoulder, and repeating the process. From what I afterwards saw, it became clear that each pair had a special place, like this moss-bank, where there was a cock's nest and where the act of pai
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