Vol. XT ALLEN on the Nesting of the Black Duck. 53 



■893'J 



NESTING OF THE BLACK DUCK ON PLUM 



THE 



ISLAND. 



BY CHARLES SLOVEK ALLEN. 

 {Plates I and IT.) 



Although having an area of bn« a few hundred «"* "™ 

 Island is so varied in its topography and so nch ,„ bird life tha 

 it proves a most interesting little world of ,«s own. The na 

 ow eastern portion consists of high, rocky, upland pastures, 

 without a tree or bush. In the miniature valleys each buy pond 

 has its pair of noisy Killdeers whose nearest neighbor, are he 

 P overs on the hillside and the Nighthawks breeding on the 

 rocky ledges. The whole north shore forms a long, megula, 

 sand iff of considerable height, thickly studded with huge 

 "tall boulders; some stranded on the beach were thirty fee 

 Mgh, while others showed great rocky masses far out n he 

 wfte, Prior to ,805, when < Old Jerome" sbd f Owned th 

 island and his law of absolute protection was m full force there 

 were but few of these boulders that were not crowned w, 1 F sh 

 Hawks' nests, to which the Kingfishers paid then visits like the 

 „ hltrel of old to the castles of the Vikings. The Swallows 

 hloced their colonies in the lesser sand banks of the southern 

 shornt gradually became a broad beach with low scattered 

 and hills to'the westward where the island broadened out mo 

 a -real rolling sandy plain. Terns were breeding in the duft and 

 enclose to the beach at South Point. As every where else 

 upon this island, Fish Hawks were nesting here by the hundred, 

 ZL few isolated and dwarfed trees, and on the ground where- 

 ever there was a little sand hill or by the side of each convement 

 tump, stake, or piece of stranded timber. Sandpipers Meadow- 

 a ks Sparrows and the like were fearlessly nesting w.thin afew 

 yards of them. Even in the densely populated *"?«**»£ 

 heavy timber, some eight or ten acres in extent, the F,sh Hawks 

 were'on the very best of terms with all their smaller neighbor 

 save only the Crows that represented the criminal element of th, 

 community, and a large rookery of Night Herons that persisted 

 no copy n, that swampy corner of the woods that merged m.o 

 and we e" in part surrounded by the great fresh water marsh in the 

 entre of the island. In this marsh it was tha, I finally found my 



