The little grebe fished for himself and for his sitting mate; he never seemed so happy and proud as when he was swimming to her, patiently sitting on her wet nest, with a little silvery fish in his beak. He also fished for old decaying weeds, which he fetched up from the bottom to add to the nest. Whenever he popped up among or near the other birds with an old rag of a weed in his beak, one or two of the grown-up young coots would try to take it from him; and seeing them gaining on him he would dive down to { 256} come up in another place, still clinging to the old rag half a yard long; and again the chase would be renewed, and again he would dive; until at last, after many narrow escapes and much strategy, the nest would be gained, and the sitting bird would take the weed from him and draw it up and tuck it round her, pleased with his devotedness, and at the sight of his triumph over the coots. As a rule, after giving her something--a little fish, or a wet weed to pull up and make herself comfortable with--they would join their voices in that long trilling cry of theirs, like a metallic, musical-sounding policeman's rattle.
It was not in a mere frolicsome spirit that the young coots hunted the dabchick with his weed, but rather, as I imagine, because the white succulent stems of aquatic plants growing deep in the water are their favourite food; they are accustomed to have it dived for by their parents and brought up to them, and they never appear to get enough to satisfy them; but when they are big, and their parents refuse to slave for them, they seem to want to make the little grebes their fishers for succulent stems.
One day in August 1899, I witnessed a pretty little bird-comedy at the Pen Ponds, in Richmond Park, which seemed to throw a strong light on the inner or domestic life of the coot. For a space of twenty minutes I watched an old coot industriously diving and bringing up the white parts of the stems of _Polygonum persicaria_, which grows abundantly there, together with the rarer more beautiful _Lymnanthemum nymphoïdes_, { 257} which is called Lymnanth for short. I prefer an English name for a British plant, an exceedingly attractive one in this case, and so beg leave to call it Water-crocus. The old bird was attended by a full-grown young one, which she was feeding, and the unfailing diligence and quickness of the parent were as wonderful to see as the gluttonous disposition of its offspring. The old coot dived at least three times every minute, and each time came up with a clean white stem, the thickness of a stout clay pipe-stem, cut the proper length--about three to four inches. This the young bird would take and instantly swallow; but before it was well down his throat the old bird would be gone for another. I was with a friend, and we wondered when its devouring cormorant appetite would be appeased, and how its maw could contain so much food; we also compared it to a hungry Italian greedily sucking down macaroni.