288 Beetz, Notes on the Eider. [j^Jj^ 



of the Gulf, but since for some years the nesting females have been 

 continually disturbed, and their eggs taken by fishermen and even * 

 by strangers coming in egging schooners, these birds have begun 

 to diminish rapidly in numbers. Happily for the last two or three 

 years, this destruction has stopped of itself by the birds' natural 

 instinct for conservation in the following manner: The fox, who 1 

 has been in the habit of taking for the purpose of feeding its young, 

 the eggs of birds nesting on the main land and on islands easily 

 reached at low tide, has gradually diminished in numbers or at 

 least has retreated to the interior on account of the intense winter 

 hunting for skins, and the summer hunting for live animals for 

 breeding purposes. A large part of the Eiders have profited by the 

 retreat of the fox, and have adopted the habit more and more 

 every year of nesting on the mainland on the borders of the little 

 fresh water lakes so abundant along the coast, or on the islands in 

 these lakes. If the lakes are near the seashore the female uses 

 little paths she has made; if at a distance, she passes too and fro 

 on the wing. On the main land she has more space, conceals her 

 nest better and man is rarely able to rob it. On this account in 

 place of a diminution in numbers of the Eider there is already an 

 increase, and in a few years, when the greater part of the Eiders 

 have adopted the habit of nesting on the mainland, the increase 

 will be very rapid.^ 



Immediately the young are dry after hatching, the female con- 

 ducts them to the salt water. At the approach of danger — a boat 



' I am afraid M. Beetz is too optimistic in this. As a result of my own observations I 

 have come to the conclusion that the Eider not only is rapidly diminishing in numbers but 

 that in many places it is almost exterminated, and that its numbers are not kept up by a 

 transference of its breeding habitat to the mainland. Wherever fishermen or Indians are 

 found, the islands are nearly cleared of Eiders, and the small number of birds about, show 

 that they are not nesting concealed on the mainland. For example in the transit of 18 

 miles through the Petite Rigolette I saw only one flock of thirty and those were near the 

 entrance. In the great lake-like expanse at the mouth of the St. Augustine River, where 

 Eiders up to a comparatively few years ago bred in large numbers on the rocky islands, 

 hardly any were to be seen and none at all in the little lakes of the mainland. The only 

 freshwater lakelet on the coast where I found a female Eider and her brood of ducklings 

 was on the large island of Wapitagun — practically a part of the mainland. At Piashte 

 Bay and Natashquan the Eskimo dogs are confined in the summer, but at the other settle- 

 ments to the eastward the dogs roam unrestrained, and are as bad as foxes in finding and 

 devouring eggs and young. But even in regions away from any settlement and its dogs I 

 have never found any evidence of the Eider nesting on the mainland except in trifling num- 

 bers. C. W. T. 



