1907 ] Bent, Summer Birds of Southwestern Saskatchewan. 415 



the farther end and a great cloud of California and Ring-billed 

 Gulls arose from the center of the island, but we devoted our 

 attention at first to the American Avocets which had flown out 

 to greet us with their yelping notes of protest. Their nests were 

 placed in the short grass near the beach or on the windrows of 

 drift weed which lined the shores. There were not over a dozen 

 pairs in the colony. A small colony of Common Terns were nesting 

 in the short grass, two nests of Spotted Sandpipers were found, 

 Wilson's Phalaropes were flying about, and specimens of Northern 

 Phalaropes and Semipalmated Sandpipers were collected. In 

 the long grass we found a Pintail's nest with nine eggs in the proc- 

 ess of hatching and five ducks' nests, with apparently fresh eggs, 

 which we took to be Baldpates, though we could not identify them 

 with certainty, as the birds were not incubating. On the higher 

 portion of the island, among the tall dead weeds, we found three 

 ducks' nests, referred to hereafter under the American Merganser, 

 which we were unable to satisfactorily identify. The California 

 and Ring-billed Gull colony occupied the whole of the main portion 

 of the island, which was thickly covered with their nests; we could 

 form no accurate idea of their numbers, as we did not have time 

 to count the nests, but to say that there were at least 1000 pairs 

 of each species would be a conservative statement. The nests 

 of the Ring-billed Gulls were chiefly on the higher portion of the 

 island, while those of the California Gulls were mostly around the 

 shores and on a bare, flat point, though both species were some- 

 what intermingled where the two colonies came together. I should 

 say that about half of the eggs had hatched, for we found hundreds 

 of the downy young hiding among the scanty vegetation and saw 

 them swimming out from the shores in large numbers. This 

 island was visited again, by the other members of our party, on 

 July 18-21, 1906, when they found the bird population of the little 

 island increased by a nesting colony of fourteen pairs of American 

 White Pelicans and four pairs of Double-crested Cormorants. On 

 the neighboring shores of the lake and on the adjacent meadows 

 and prairies the shore birds were well represented by numerous 

 Long-billed Curlews, Western Willets, Marbled Godwits and 

 Killdeers, all of which were breeding in the immediate vicinity. 

 The most interesting locality of all was the duck island in Crane 



