At the time of my visit to the lake, the latter part of June, the yellow-heads were busy feeding their young, many of which had already left the nest. From the shore, I could see dozens of them clinging to the reeds, several of which they would grasp with the claws of each foot, their little legs straddled far apart, the flexile rushes spreading out beneath their weight. There the youngsters perched, without seeming to feel any discomfort from their strained position. And what a racket they made when the parent birds returned from an excursion to distant meadows and lawns, with bill-some tidbits! They were certainly a hungry lot of bairns. When I waded out into the shallow water toward their rushy home, the old birds became quite uneasy, circling about above me like the red-wings, and uttering a harsh blackbird "chack," varied at intervals by a loud, and not unmusical, chirp. [Illustration: _Yellow-Headed Blackbirds_ "_There the youngsters perched_"] You should see the nest of the yellow-head. It is really a fine structure, showing no small amount of artistic skill--a plaited cup, looking almost as if it had been woven by human hands, the rushes of the rim and sides folding the supporting reeds in their loops. Thus the nest and its reedy pillars are firmly bound together. I waded out to a clump of rushes and found one nest with three eggs in its softly felted cup--the promise, no doubt, of a belated, or possibly a second, brood. This mountain lake was also the abode of a number of species of ducks, not all of which could be identified, on account of the distance they constantly put between themselves and the observer. Flocks of them floated like light, feathered craft upon the silvery bosom of the lake, now pursuing one another, now drifting lazily, now diving, and anon playing many attractive gambols. One of the most curious ducks I have ever seen was the ruddy duck, called in the scientific manuals _Erismatura rubida_. As I sat on a rock on the shore, watching the aquatic fowl, one of the male ruddy ducks, accompanied by three or four females, swam out from the reeds into an open space where I could see him plainly with my field-glass. A beautiful picture he presented, as he glided proudly about on the water, surrounded by his devoted harem. Imagine, if you can, how regal he must have appeared--his broad, flat bill, light blue, widening out at the commissure, and seeming to shade off into the large white cheeks, which looked like snowy puffballs on the sides of his head; his crown, black and tapering; his neck, back, and sides, a rich, glossy brownish-red; his lower parts, "silky, silvery white, 'watered' with dusky, yielding, gray undulations"; and his wing-coverts and jauntily perked-up tail, black. If that was not a picture worthy of an artist's brush I have never seen one in the outdoor world.