240 



Bird - Lore 



Parrot,' one of our most curious birds, — in fact, I believe they form the only 

 breeding-place of these birds in the eastern United States. 



For the interest I bore the birds, as well as from curiosity to see the lonely 

 station whose distant lights I had watched flashing across the water so many 

 times from the Maine coast, I set sail in a twenty-seven feet sloop from Machias 

 Bay, of a fair and calm morning in early July, bound to the low- lying islands. 

 'Tide rips,' in the local fishermen's parlance, surround them on every side; and 

 with tide running contrary to wind, it makes a very disagreeable, and some- 

 times dangerous, sea. Even in the calmest of summer days, such as I had the 

 good fortune to select, the furious Fundy tide sends big rolling swells against 

 the rockbound shores, where they are churned into white spray on the light 



PITFIX I I )L( >\\" 



gray rocks. On near approach, it looked rather dubious to attempt a landing in 

 the surf; but my skilled boatman, in the usual manner of the Maine coast 

 lobsterman when hauUng his traps, facing the bow of the tender and watching 

 chances, put us to the rocks close beside the iron boat-ways, in a moment of 

 calm, after three combing waves. 



The smaller island of the two is merely a bare, smooth ledge, having on 

 one side a beach, if such it may be called, composed of round, smooth stones, 

 the smallest ten or twelve inches in diameter, and varying up to two or three 

 feet, — and all so slippery with fine seaweeds as to make it nearly impossible to 

 walk. The main island, on which is the light station, I found to cover about 

 fifteen acres, with short grass and a few hardy flowers in the center, and 

 edged and bound by smooth gray ledges, on which in places were piled, 

 helter-skelter, immense boulders, in one part, near the fog-signal house, cover- 



