VOl 19o! m ] Anthony, Pacific Coast Gulls. 137 



California furnish roosting places for numbers of gulls, terns and 

 cormorants, as well as a few herons and shore birds, but the large 

 majority will, if an island is within thirty miles, wing their way to 

 its shelter. Many of their most favored roosting places are but 

 little if any used as nesting grounds. 



Some of these winter resorts that I have visited on the coast of 

 Lower California are deserving of more than passing notice. San 

 Geronimo and Nativadad Islands are typical of this class. Both 

 are rather low, sandy islands, almost entirely devoid of vegetation 

 of any kind. A person nearing these islands in the afternoon will 

 notice, while still thirty miles or more distant, long, straggling flocks 

 of cormorants, loose, scattered companies of gulls, and small mili- 

 tary squads of California Brown Pelicans, all converging toward 

 one point. As the island grows larger and the sun sinks lower 

 birds become more and more plenty, flocks hurry by with greater 

 frequency and with an air of business that has not marked their 

 actions earlier in the day. 



The first cormorants will arrive at the island as early as four 

 o'clock, and taking up their station well back from the beach will 

 be joined by the next flock. The black patch on the gray sand 

 extends its outposts until it meets the brown borders of the pelican 

 colony on the one side, and the snowy expanse of gulls on the other, 

 completely surrounding them and forcing later arrivals of gulls 

 and pelicans to start other camp grounds further along. These 

 again are overtaken and surrounded until by dusk the entire side 

 of the island will be one solid mass of closely packed birds, the 

 white of the gulls and brown plumages of the pelicans standing 

 out in striking contrast to the inky blackness of the cormorants 

 which form over three quarters of the mass. The species all flock 

 separately so far as is possible, and the result is a patchwork of 

 white and gray separated by broad zones of black; even the Brandt's 

 and Farralone Cormorants roost apart, with the somewhat rare 

 Baird's Cormorant still further removed, perching on the low cliffs 

 and rocks along the beach. Stragglers arrive until late in the night ; 

 the gulls, in fact, do not all get home until the first of the early risers 

 begin to leave at daybreak. The departure is even more gradual 

 if possible than the arrival of the night before, and it is not until 

 the sun is two hours high that the last of the cormorants leave for 

 the fishing grounds. 



