The Bird Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory 153 



give a class, he is well grounded in the study. He can readily 

 recognize a few birds, and knows where to look for them ; he has 

 learned how to identify and name any others without difftculty ; how 

 to make discoveries for himself ; and, above all, he has learned the 

 absorbing charm of the study of the individual bird, and the delight 

 of a close acquaintance with nature. 



The Bird Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory, 

 Woods Holl, Mass., during the Summer of 1900 



BY THOS. H. MONTGOMERY, Jr.. Ph. D., Director of the Course 



OR the first time in its history there was started this year 

 at the Marine Biological Laboratory a Nature-Study 

 Course. The objects taken up during the six weeks of 

 the course were cryptogamic and phanerogamic plants, 

 the king crab, insects, and various marine invertebrates, 

 the toad, and birds. It is concerning the bird-study alone 

 that I have been asked to prepare a brief account for Bikd-Lore. 



The field work consisted of three mornings spent in the woods 

 and fields near the laboratory, and of one day's trip to the breeding 

 grounds of Terns at Penikese. In this field work, as in that of the 

 laboratory, the director was most ably assisted by Mr. Leon J. Cole 

 and Mr. Herbert Coggins ; and in the field the students could be 

 separated into groups, taking slightly different routes. Further, the 

 attempt was made to post the students of each group apart from one 

 another and at favorable places, so that they became, to some extent, 

 independent observers, and could see as many birds as possible with 

 the least possible noise. The noise occasioned by a large party of 

 students walking together through underbrush tends to frighten the 

 birds most effectively, and this difficulty was obviated by the above 

 mentioned method of "posting" the students, while the instructors 

 visited in succession the various "posts." One mistake was made 

 in placing the Bird Course at the beginning of August, when the 

 birds sing but little and are in the low spirits of the moulting period. 

 Another year this course will be placed at the beginning of the season. 

 As to the laboratory work, one day was spent on the gross anat- 

 omy of the Pigeon, and three afternoons on the study of bird-skins. 

 On two of these afternoons the skins were studied for the purpose 

 of identification, on the third for the correspondence of structure with 

 habit. Two entire days were spent on the study of living Pigeons, 

 under the direction of Professor Whitman, the head of the laboratory. 



