42 KNOWING BIRDS THROUGH STORIES 



given up duck hunting, but pelicans were different. Ac- 

 cordingly he shouldered his gun and tramped to the river 

 before daylight. Along about one o'clock in the after- 

 noon he came home carrying five or six wild ducks but 

 reported that he had not seen any trace of the larger birds. 



Evidently they had gone north during the night. 



These were the last of their kind I ever saw until I went 

 to Utah some ten or fifteen years later, in the year 1898. 

 I spent two years at Provo City, which is situated near 

 the beautiful fresh water Utah Lake. This lake is some 

 twelve or fifteen miles wide, and has a small rocky island 

 near the middle. The island is neither more nor less 

 than a low mountain rising from the bosom of the lake. A 

 number of pelicans nested regularly on this island. It is 

 in such places that they always prefer to live. They either 

 nest on some high rocky point or select a low or high rocky 

 island at some considerable distance from the shore, usually 

 choosing an island that has no human inhabitants. There 

 they build their nests by merely making a shallow depres- 

 sion in the ground or by making a heap of earth and lining 

 it with grass and feathers or sometimes with sticks and 

 rubbish. Their eggs are very large, among the largest of 

 the eggs of birds which live in America. 



I used to like to go down to the shore of Utah Lake of 

 an evening and watch the pelicans. They seldom fish in 

 flocks during the mating season. In fact, while others 

 claim that they usually fish in flocks, I never had the 

 good fortune of seeing them do so except as I have 

 described above. Utah Lake was so full of minnows and 

 fish of all kinds that perhaps it was unnecessary to fish in 

 bands. At any rate the usual procedure was for an old 

 pelican to come flapping across the lake, flying very low 



