NESTS AND NEST-BUILDING IN BIRDS 253 



for ages, with the aid of ingenious snares, poles and ropes. Yet 

 true to the instincts and traditions of their race the many kinds 

 of sea fowl, though regularly robbed, resort each year to their 

 rugged homes to breed. We are reminded of the compass like 

 precision with which many birds keep to the fatal overland and 

 coast routes in Italy and other parts of the Mediterranean, 

 which they have followed for ages, in spite of the terrible per- 

 secution which has awaited them each year, not to speak of 

 other migration routes over sea, which at the time of their 

 origin, for all we know to the contrary, were really over land. 

 Fortunately some of these wonderful bird colonies, which now 

 represent but the remnant of the hosts of an earlier day, are 

 being wisely preserved. 



My own experience with the herring gulls has been gathered 

 from studies of the two largest communities on the New Eng- 

 land coast, at the Duck Islands, Maine, which lie from five to 

 seven miles to the south and east of Mount Desert. Both 

 islands are partially wooded, but the lesser to the north is 

 occupied only by semi-feral sheep and still wilder sea fowl; it 

 supports the larger community of gulls, the nests of which are 

 scattered over the rough bush grown slope of its southern side. 

 The birds of this community have never been strictly protected, 

 and though shy and difficult of approach, they have never 

 taken extensively to breeding in trees so far as known. 



On Great Duck there is a fine colony of upwards of 4,000 

 birds which occupy a more restricted area of high rocky shore 

 and fallen spruce woods, now largely clear, especially in the 

 vicinity of the Government Lighthouse, at its extreme southern 

 end. Though shamefully persecuted from the days of the Indian 

 on both of the islands, the colony of Great Duck was taken 

 more especially under the protective shield of the Audubon 

 Society about twelve years ago. Its nests are more concen- 

 trated, and its members less shy than on the smaller domain, 

 but so far as I have been able to learn the habits of both com- 

 munities have remained essentially the same from an early 

 day. At either point comparatively few birds have taken to 

 building tree nests. To have formerly disturbed them by firing 

 a gun, or by a succession of dynamite blasts as I had occasion 

 more recently to observe, was to throw a large part of the com- 



