. Birds that hunt and are hunted; life histories of one hundred and seventy birds of prey, game birds and water-fowls . d andplunge downward; but in any case they protect themselves bydiving rather than by flight, and the maddening cleverness oftheir disappearance, which can be indefinitely prolonged owingto their habit of swimming with only the nostrils exposed abovethe surface, makes it simply impossible to locate them again onthe lake. On land, however, the grebes are all but helpless. Standingerect, and keeping their balance by the help of a rudimentary tail,they look almost as uncomfortab
. Birds that hunt and are hunted; life histories of one hundred and seventy birds of prey, game birds and water-fowls . d andplunge downward; but in any case they protect themselves bydiving rather than by flight, and the maddening cleverness oftheir disappearance, which can be indefinitely prolonged owingto their habit of swimming with only the nostrils exposed abovethe surface, makes it simply impossible to locate them again onthe lake. On land, however, the grebes are all but helpless. Standingerect, and keeping their balance by the help of a rudimentary tail,they look almost as uncomfortable as fish out of water, which theevolutionists would have us believe the group of diving birdsvery nearly are. When the young ones are taken from a nestand placed on land they move with the help of their wings as ifcrawling on all fours, very much as a reptile might; and theeggs from which they have just emerged are ellipsoidal—i. e.,elongated and with both ends pointed alike, another reptiliancharacteristic, it is thought. But oology is far from an exactscience. As young alligators, for example, crawl on their. PIED BILLED GREBE, Grebes mothers back to rest, so the young grebes may often be an underthrust from the mothers wing, which answersevery purpose of a spring-board, the fledglings are precipitatedinto the water, and so acquire very early in life the art of diving,which in this family reaches its most perfect development. Fora while, however, the young try to escape danger by hiding inthe rushes of the lake, stream, or salt-water inlet, rather than bydiving. Grebes are not maritime birds. Their preference is for slow-moving waters, especially at the nesting season, since their nestsare floating ones, and their food consists of small fish, mollusks,newts, and grain, such as the motionless inland waters abundantlyafford. In winter, when we see the birds near our coasts, theyusually feed on small fish alone. Unhappily the plumage of thisand other grebes is in d
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectgameand, bookyear1912
