388 



Bird - Lore 



NEST AND EGGS OF HERRING GULL 



Leach's Petrel. If this be in the midst of 

 a Tern colony, toss the bird in the air, 

 and immediately every one of the hun- 

 dreds of Screaming Terns that are flying 

 about overhead will cease their cries and 

 fly like mad toward the open sea. They 

 act as though they had seen a ghost. 

 Petrels begin to lay their eggs here about 

 July 15, and the warden on Great Duck 

 Island says they continue to breed until 

 so late in the autumn that often the old 

 and young are frozen in their nests. 



One night we lay for a time on a bed of 

 evergreen boughs among the rocks of 

 Little Duck Island. By half-past eight 

 o'clock the cries of the last belated home- 

 coming Gulls had ceased. For a time all 

 was quiet. Then suddenly, in the still 

 night air, peculiar un-bird-like sounds 

 began to come out of the darkness all 

 about us. The great army of Petrels, 

 which had been feeding at sea all day, 



had begun to arrive, and from the mouths 

 of their nesting-burrows they were calling 

 to their mates, which since early morning 

 had been guarding the subterranean nests. 



Other Birds 



Most of the sea-bird islands are inhab- 

 ited by small colonies of Black Guille- 

 mots, and as they fly up before the boat, 

 or wheel past you as you clamber along 

 the rocky shore, their red feet and white 

 wing-patches give them a most charac- 

 teristic and interesting appearance. Their 

 eggs and young are well hidden under the 

 immense windrows of gigantic boulders 

 against which the waves continually beat. 



Pufiiins are found nesting on Machias 

 Seal Island in the mouth of the Bay of 

 Fundy, but ordinarily they do not breed 

 south of that point at this time. Proba- 

 bly fifty or sixty pairs of Eiders hatch 



