BIRDS FOUND NEAR SHORE OR IN BAYS 51 
with fresh sea moss. From the amount of guano used, 
and the solidity with which most of these structures 
had become cemented to the rock, — indeed, they seemed 
a part of the rock itself, —I judged that they had been 
handed down from one cormorant generation to another, 
for many years. Yet each season sees them carefully 
redecorated on the outside with new, bright-colored 
seaweed. This weed is seldom picked up on the rocks, 
but is freshly pulled from the bed of the ocean near 
shore, the birds diving in some places more than fifty 
feet. Upon timing one, I found it was under water 
two and one half minutes; it then reappeared with 
a bill full of scarlet algee. Here again the mischievous 
gulls are in evidence, and the poor Cormorant must guard 
his gayly trimmed nest, or every bit of his hard-earned 
moss will be stolen. After the five chalky green eggs 
are laid his vigilance must never relax, for cormorant 
egos and cormorant babies are the most delicious morsels 
in a sea gull’s menu. So the great awkward birds are 
ever craning their long necks this way and_ that, — 
watching before, behind, on every side, for the white- 
winged robbers. The effect is that, from any point of 
view, a cormorant rookery is a weird sight. As the 
days go by, the pretty nests blossom one by one with 
newly hatched Cormorants, the very homeliest of all 
created things. Their ungainly bodies are encased in a 
naked, greasy black skin, and their preternaturally long 
necks end in immense mouths, so that they resemble 
huge polliwogs. Like polliwogs, also, they are ever 
wriggling. For the first few days the young Cormorants 
