^°'i"9^4^'] K\\, Fortnight oti the Faralloties. 437 



and boulders sat the angered cormorants with open bills, pul- 

 sating throats and ruffled feathers, shaking their snake-like necks 

 back and forth and uttering hoarse guttural, wheezy croaks, and 

 only leaving the nests when we were within arm's reach of it. 

 The parents were easily identified by the bright yellow gular sac, 

 and the young, which most of the nests contained, were inky- 

 skinned creatures, with little in their favor, wobbling helplessly 

 about the nests and barking like little puppies. On our last visit 

 most of them were covered with sooty down and looked more pre- 

 sentable. The eggs, three or four in number, were nearly all well 

 advanced in incubation, although we got several fresh sets ; they 

 had the appearance of being finely spotted, on account of the 

 numerous fly specks. 



The weed nests (Plate XXVII, Fig. 2) were like those of the gull 

 but much larger and shallower, measuring twenty inches across, 

 the cavity being nine in width and three in depth. I counted but 

 forty-seven nests in the colony, which shows that the number of 

 these birds, now the least abundant cormorant on the islands, is 

 continually decreasing. On subsequent visits we noticed the birds 

 did not re-lay in the nests from which we had taken eggs. The 

 gulls did not molest the eggs and young in this rookery, for the 

 reason the -old birds did not give them a chance, they settling 

 back on the nest as soon as we passed it. While it was interest- 

 ing to watch these avian snakes in their summer home, the decay 

 ing remains of numerous fish about the colony and the swarms of 

 seal-flies rendered it a pleasant place to be away from. 



g. Phalacrocorax penicillatus. Brandt's Cormorant. 



Brandt's Cormorant is the commonest and biggest species of 

 the island cormorants. Besides the large rookery on the more 

 gradual slopes on the north side below Main Top Ridge, extend- 

 ing from near the water to well up the hillside, there are large col- 

 onies nesting on Saddle Rock and Sugar Loaf. We gained our 

 first view of the rookery on West End when we crossed the ridge 

 on the morning of May 30. Right below us, with scarcely foot- 

 space between the nests, was the great city of cormorants. (Plate 

 XXVII.) I counted 156 nests; on June 3 they had increased to 

 187, and they were still building. The weeds that trail over the 



