About the habits of the little grebe, as about those of the moor-hen, many curious and entertaining things have been written; but what amused me most in these birds, when I watched them in late September {261} on the Itchen, was the skilful way in which the parent bird taught her grown-up young ones to fish. At an early period the fishes given to the downy young are very small, and are always well bruised in the beak before the young bird is allowed to take it, however eager he may be to seize it. Afterwards, when the young are more grown, the size of the fishes is increased, and they are less and less bruised, although always killed. Finally, the young has to be taught to catch for himself; and at first he does not appear to have any aptitude for such a task, or any desire to acquire it. He is tormented with hunger, and all he knows is that his parent can catch fish for him, and his only desire is that she shall go on catching them as fast as he can swallow them. And she catches him a fish, and gives it to him, but, oh mockery! it was not really dead this time, and instantly falls into the water and is lost! Not hopelessly lost, however, for down she goes like lightning, and comes up in ten seconds with it again. And he takes and drops it again, and looks stupid, and again she recovers and gives it to him. How many hundreds of times, I wonder, must this lesson be repeated before the young grebe finds out how to keep and to kill? Yet that is after all only the beginning of his education. The main thing is that he must be taught to dive after the fishes he lets fall, and he appears to have no inclination, no intuitive impulse, to do such a thing. A small, quite dead fish must be given him carelessly, so that it shall fall, and he must be taught to pick up a {262} fallen morsel from the surface; but from that first simple act to the swift plunge and long chase after and capture of uninjured vigorous fishes, what an immense distance there is! It is, however, probable that, after the first reluctance of the young bird has been overcome, and a habit of diving after escaped fishes acquired, he makes exceedingly rapid progress.