^'°g„^^] DuTCHER AXD Baily, Haluts of the Herring GuU. /|. I C) 



Lighthouse Department owns a reservation of about two acres. 

 This contains the Hght tower, three dwellings, engine room, two 

 boat houses, and a long tank-shed for catching rainwater for tlie 

 fog-whistle engines. The greatest elevation of the island is about 

 sixty feet, the average being about twenty-five feet above high- 

 water mark. ^ The gulls occupy the southern end of the island and 

 are divided into two parts, which may be designated as the east 

 and west colonies. In the former in 190 1 there were al)out 

 twelve hundred birds, and in the latter about eighteen hundred. 

 In 1902 the area of the colony was somewhat larger than the pre- 

 vious year, extending about a hundred yards further northward in 

 the western colony. Probably 3500 birds v/ere breeding, 500 

 more than last year; on July 15 hundreds of young birds, from a 

 day to three and a half weeks old, were scattered over the two 

 breeding areas. 



On our arrival at the island in 1901 nest building and laying 

 was practically completed. One belated gull, however, built and 

 occupied a nest after that date, which afforded us some insight 

 into the method of construction. It was located on a flat rock, as 

 some hundreds of nests were. The rock nests, usually, did not 

 have any stick or twig foundations, but were built of grass, weeds, 

 mosses, lichens, some kelp, either green or dry, feathers, wool, 

 bark, and small bits of drift and rotten wood, all laid upon the 

 rock and formed by the birds into shallow bowls. This special 

 nest was built entirely of fresh green material, and was, when first 

 seen, a flat, scattered mass without any form whatever. It con- 

 tained one Qgg, the bird probably having been ready to deposit it 

 before the nest was completed. On several occasions single eggs 

 were found where there were no nests. A few hours later this 

 nest was visited and in the interim the bird had formed it into the 

 usual shape. The nests built upon the ground were almost 

 exactly like the rock nests. Those built on trees or upturned 

 stumps, had a solid foundation of sticks and twigs, and sur- 

 mounting this the usual form and make of nest. The tree nests 

 are always placed on a flat branch or top of a spruce or fir, one of 

 which w^as in one about twenty-five feet high ; however, they are 

 not common on Duck Island, there being only about a dozen. 



The grass in manv of the nests was dead and brown, but it is 



