Exhibit in Chicago Natural History Museum 



Laysan Island Nesting Sea'Birds 



Stretching westward from Hawaii is a series of widely scattered small islands and 

 islets. Laysan Island, the scene of the present exhibit, is near the middle of this chain, 

 about 800 miles from Honolulu. It is an atoll of about two square miles, with a char- 

 acteristic central lagoon of perhaps 100 acres. 



The sand, turf, and shrubbery of this tiny islet were renowned as a bird paradise, 

 especially for sea birds: albatrosses, terns, boobies, frigate birds, tropic birds, and 

 petrels. Fisher wrote that two things impressed him about the birds on Laysan: the 

 first was their abundance, a population of two million birds having been estimated on 

 this tiny islet; the second was their lameness and fearlessness. 



Fisher wrote that the sea birds "seemed little put out by our presence and pursued 

 their ordinary duties as if we were an essential part of the landscape. Even the land 

 birds were fearless. While we sat working, not infrequently the little warbler, or miller 

 Ijird, would perch on our table or chair backs, and the Laysan rail and finch (a dre- 

 panid honey-creeper) would scurry about our feet in unobtrusive search for flies and 

 bits of meat. Each day at meal time the crimson honey-eater flew into the room and 

 hunted for millers. As we strolled over the island the rails scampered hither and 

 thither, like tiny barnyard fowls. As for the sea birds there was scarcely a species that 

 seriously objected to our close approach, or at any rate departed when we attempted 



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