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 34 Bird - Lore Where the Grebe Skins Come From. By Vernon Baii.ev, Biological Survey, Depart- ment of Agriculture. In a Washington street car the other day I counted thirteen Grebe skins on women's hats, and I am sure Washing- ton women are no more partial to these ornaments than the women of other cities across the whole breadth of the continent, The beautiful, silvery skins with rich brown borders are becoming so fashionable and being worn by so many thousand women, that the ques- tion arises. Where do they come from ? Last summer my work took me among the Grebe hunters of the lake region of eastern California and Oregon. In this half desert region of scattered stock ranches, where great, shallow, alkaline lakes with wide borders of tules fill the bottoms of the valleys and the country seems fitted especially to be a home for wild things, vast numbers of Grebes have for centuries built their nests and raised their young. Their only enemies were the mink, otter and other wild foes that experience had taught them to cope with. Even the Indians left them unmo- lested, preferring Ducks and their eggs as food, so the Grebes were secure in their homes until fashion claimed them. Over most of the country the Grebes are known only as migrants, when they are so wary and so expert in diving that they are well prepared to take care of themselves. But on the breeding grounds all is different. As I waded among the tules in the shallow margins of Tule lake, California, last summer, the Grebes followed close after me or, diving, came up again only a few feet away, cackling and scolding, as they tried to drive or coax me away from their island nests, which were floating among the tules, boldly offering their lives for the safety of their homes. Often as I stopped to examine the hastily covered eggs in the damp cup of the floating nest, the old birds would rise noiselessly from beneath the water by the side of the nest and sit motionlesss on the surface, watching me with their bright red eyes full of anxiety. Or, as I surprised a brood of little black, downy chicks among the tules one of the parent birds would swim fearlessly up to me to at- tract my attention, while the other hur- ried the chicks out of sight into the tules or swam rapidly, with them clinging to her feathers, out into deep water. The three species of Grebes breeding here, the Western, the Eared, and the Dab- chick, though belonging to different gen- era, are similar in habits. They are miniature Loons, graceful, soft-tinted, silvery breasted water sylphs, fitted only for inhabiting the water or the air. Harmless, beautiful, defenceless, they fill the place among birds which the fur seals do among mammals, and their doom seems as sure and as sad. While among the nests watching the brave, beautiful little' people building and guarding their homes and caring for their young, I could hear the guns of the skin hunters along the shore of the lake all day, and I was told that from early spring till the lakes freeze in fall the destruction goes on, though most successfully during the breeding season. The birds are shot, the skins of the breasts are stripped off, dried flat and packed in gunny sacks. They bring the hunters 20 cents each, and I was told that several thousand were shipped from Klamath Falls every week through the summer, and that the hunters often make twenty or thirty dollars a day. Shall we appeal to these rough, untaught men to desist — to give up the rich harvest they are reaping ? It would be as useless as to appeal to the unthinking women who decorate themselves with the innocent breasts. The state laws do not protect these birds, because they are not consid- ered game. A few years more and there will be no need of protecting them ; they will be where the Egrets, the Pigeons and the Buffalo are — in our memories.