Page:Life Histories of North American Diving Birds.djvu/28

4 wade and the canes are so thick that it is almost impossible to push a canoe through them. The few nests that we found were near the edges of small ponds or channels and well concealed in the thick growth; the nests were large and well-made structures of dry, dead canes, 2 or 3 feet in diameter and built up 6 or 7 inches above the water.

The large grebe colonies of the Klamath Lake region in southern Oregon and northern California have been described by several well-known writers. The lakes in this region contain probably the largest western grebe colonies in this country where thousands of them breed in harmony with Caspian and Forster's terns, white pelicans, and other water birds. This region has long been famous as a profitable field for plume hunters, where they have reaped a rich harvest, making $20 or $30 a day and during the height of the breeding season killing several thousand birds a week. The breasts of the western and other grebes were in great demand for the millinery trade; for the paltry sum of 20 cents apiece they were stripped off, dried, and shipped to New York. Such slaughter could not have continued much longer without disastrous results. Through the activities of the Audubon Societies, the attention of President Roosevelt was called to the need of protection, and on August 8, 1908, he set apart the Klamath Lake Reservation, and on August 18, 1908, the Lake Malheur Reservation, thus saving from destruction the largest and most interesting wild-fowl nurseries on the Pacific coast. Mr. W. L. Finley (1907a) has enjoyed good opportunities for studying the western grebes in these colonies and writes thus interestingly of their habits: