18963 A Fu7' Seal Census 



fore the pups are due. A pup born at sea would, 

 of course, be drowned immediately; and no Fur 

 Seal has ever been known to land anywhere save 

 on breeding islands. Furthermore, the old ones 

 mostly return to their own special rookeries, which 

 they rarely leave for any other. 

 An interesting exception to this habit came under 

 I my observation. One day a big beachmaster, eight The white 

 or nine years of age, a semi-albino and therefore ^^"■^ 

 easily recognized, landed on Gorbatch Rookery, 

 where for nearly a week he savagely tried to break 

 in. But the whole shore being already preempted 

 by older bulls, he was forced to retire so far back 

 that no females joined him, and in disgust he finally 

 crossed the narrow peninsula to the Reef Rookery, 

 where his luck was better. 



At the outset of our labors it seemed to me that a 

 "Fur Seal Census" was a pressing necessity. We 

 therefore undertook the first actual count of the 

 animals ever made, their great abundance in earlier 

 years having precluded any previous attempt at 

 enumeration. To count the 4629 harems from a Counting 

 boat in the sea or from the clifi^s above proved a 

 relatively easy matter. With considerable dif- 

 ficulty we also enumerated the visible mothers, 

 though after a while we discovered that at no one 

 time were more than half of them actually present, 

 as even before the tardiest arrived, the earliest have 

 gone off to feed. 



In each harem belonged from one to fifty "cows," 

 the average number being about thirty-five. But 

 it was evident that a trustworthy figure would be 

 gained only from a census of the pups, each one of 



C 563 3 



harems 



