ORNITHOLOGIST 



— AND — 



()() LOCUST. 



•■?1.0n per 

 Annnni. 



Joseph M. Wade, Editor and Publisher. 



Established, March, 1875. 



SiiiRle '^opy, 

 10 Cents. 



VOL. VII. 



NORWICH, CONN., JULY, 1882. 



NO. 18. 



Malheur Lake, Oregon. 



BY CAPT. CH.iS. E. BENDIEE. U. S. A. 



Diiriiif,' these maneuvers I was laying in 

 some tall grass, on a little elevation close 

 to the shore, and watching the birds with a 

 strong night-glass. After a little further 

 hesitation, the main Ijody came up, and 

 for such a number of birds — there must 

 have Ijeen at least five liundred of them, 

 the}' kept smgularly (juiet, an occasional 

 guttural grunt, resembling the word dooe, 

 dooe, was all I could hear. Their distrust 

 apparently quieted, they now commenced 

 to divide themselves into parties of about 

 thirty birds each, who acted in concert, 

 forming a semi-circle, grailually closing in 

 towards the sliore, anil driving large nniu 

 bers of fish with them into the shallow 

 water, and then they commenced their fish 

 ing operations in earaest. Such a splash 

 ing as took place is impossible to describe : 

 it must be seen to form an idea of it. 

 Each fish was grasped in the middle, 

 thi-own up a foot or so in the air. caught 

 in the descent, and swallowed head fore- 

 most. I think that from three to four large 

 fish were <lisposed of in this manner l)y 

 each bird, the last one or two being ])rol)- 

 ably canied off in their capacious pouch 

 or gular sack. The dexterity with which 

 these birds h.indled fish fully eighteen 

 inches long was something wonderfn], very 

 few getting away from them. As soon as 

 one bird had caught what it recjuired, it 

 withdrew and another would t ikc its jilace. 

 There was no (piarrelling ; everything 

 seemed to be done systematically, and I 

 have seldom seen a mori' interesting sight 



than I did during the two hours on the 

 night I watched these birds. There ap- 

 peared to be a good deal of variation in the 

 color of their immense bills, some being 

 almost dark orange red while others were 

 straw yellow. I also noticed that the cu- 

 rious horny excrescence on the uppei- man- 

 dible, characteristic of this species during 

 the breeding season in both sexes, and 

 commonly called •• centre-board," varied 

 also considerably in length, height and 

 general shape. To what use this curious 

 appendage is put, it being only develojoed 

 during the breeding season, and dropped 

 again after this is over. I am unable to tell, 

 or even make a guess at, and I shall leave 

 this for some one else to explain. 



On mv second vi.sit to these Islands I 

 found that most of the shallow i)latforms, 

 occupied Jis nests by the Great Blue Heron, 

 contained their full complement of five 

 eggs. As none of these nests were more 

 tht'.n four feet from the ground — in fact, 

 the majority average below that — I had an 

 excellent opportunity to pick out all the 

 choice sets of eggs I wanted. There is a 

 good deal of variation in both size and 

 color, even in eggs coming out of the same 

 nest. I think the first egg laid is always, 

 or nearly always, the deepest colored one, 

 and the last the palest. Freshly laid eggs 

 of this species range from a beautiful light 

 green or bluish green tint (the shade is 

 hard to describe exactly) to a pale greenish 

 white, the shell in the latter variety pre- 

 senting a mottled or spotted ajji^earance. 

 the coloring matter not lieing uniformly 

 distributed on the shell. The largest egg 

 selected nut of several hundred, measures 



