Page:Condor9(4).djvu/4

 9 8 THE CONDOR VOL, IX more like the fur of a mammal than the skin of a bird. 'hese skins when pre- pared and placed on the market in the form of coats and capes, brought the prices of the most expensive fdrs. A grebe is a bird that is difficult to shoot, because it swims so low in the water and is so quick in its movements. 'he professional hunters use a special gun that shoots a charge of shot within the area of a foot square at a distance of about forty yards. 'rhe favorite way of shooting was from a blind along the channel where the birds went back and forth from the feeding grounds, or many of the hunters thought nothing of going right among the colonies where the birds were nesting. Formerly the greatest grebe rookeries were found in the tules on the north side of 'rule Lake, but the hunters have left few birds in this locality. 'he only really large colony that we found was on Lower Klamath Lake, and that had probab- ly not been disturbed by hunters. We estimated that there were several thousand grebes nesting about this part of the Lake. A year later, during the summer of 1906, Mr. Frank Chapman visited this same locality and found scarcely any of these A CORNER IN THE WES'[ERN GREBE COLONY; ONE BIRD IS STANDING ON ITS NEST birds left; for market hunters were camped not far away. Lower Klamath Lake is a body of water about twenty-five miles long by ten or twelve miles wide. About its sides are great marshes of tules. The whole border is a veritable jungle: extending out for several miles from the main shore is an almost endless area of floating tule islands, between which is a network of channels. Here, where we found the nesting colony of Western Grebes, we had good chances to study the habits of these birds. About one of these islands we found the floating grebe nests every few feet apart, and counted over sixty in a short distmme. We rowed up to one end and landed and then waded along just inside the thick growth of tules that grew along the edge. From this place, partly concealed as we were, we could look thru the tules and see the grebes swimming and diving near their nests. Across the channel along the edge of the opposite island were many more grebe nests, and some of the birds were sitting on their eggs. The nesting habits of the Western Grebe vary somewhat from those of the