90 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN DIVING BIRDS 



1884 Frazer found a colony of about a thousand puffins. Still 

 farther to the east is the famous Parroquet Island near Bradore. 

 Audubon (1840) visited this island in 1833. He says: 



As we rowed toward it, although we found the water literally covered with 

 thousands of these birds, the number that flew over and around the green 

 island seemed much greater, insomuch that one might have imagined half the 

 puffins in the world had assembled there. 



In 1906 Townsend and Allen (1907) passed near this island and 

 say of these puffins: 

 There were at least 500 of them, perhaps many more. 



In 1860 Coues (1861) thus describes the island at the mouth of 

 Hamilton Inlet on the eastern Labrador coast: 



The Parrakeet Islands are three in number, lying along the western shore of 

 Esquimau Bay, just at its mouth. The one I visited is the innermost, as well 

 as the largest, though the others are equally crammed with birds. It is about 

 a mile in circumference. As we rounded the island close to the shore they 

 came tumbling out of their holes by hundreds and, with the thousands we dis- 

 turbed from the surface of the water, soon made a perfect cloud above and 

 around us, no longer flying in flocks, but forming one dense continuous mass. 



He also records them in numbers in the bay near Rigolet. Forty- 

 six years later, in 1906, Townsend and Allen saw only 13 puffins on a 

 steamer trip from Battle Harbor to Nain, stopping at Rigolet, and 

 only 43 on the return trip. Six years later, in 1912, Bent (1913) 

 "did not see a single puffin north of the Straits." He spent nearly 

 two months between Battle Harbor and Cape Mugford. When shot 

 at on their breeding grounds the survivors continue to fly by close at 

 hand, offering the gunner tempting shots. Both Audubon and Coues 

 seem to have yielded to this temptation and shot great numbers 

 of puffins. What can be expected of the ignorant and ruthless? 

 The story is everywhere the same a rapid diminution in the num- 

 bers of this picturesque and interesting bird. 



Courtship. I have watched groups of these birds off the southern 

 coast of Labrador during the courtship season. They swim together 

 in closely crowded ranks, rarely diving, for their thoughts are not 

 on food. At frequent intervals individuals rise up in the water and 

 flap their wings as if from nervousness. Again two males fight vig- 

 orously, flapping their wings meanwhile and making the water foam 

 about them. Again two, possibly a pair, hold each other by the 

 bills and move their heads and necks like billing doves. Now 

 several are seen to throw their heads back with a jerk until the 

 bill points up, and this is repeated a number of times. Edmund 

 Selous (1905), who has watched this action near at hand in the 

 puffins of the Shetlands, says the bill is opened wide but no sound is 

 uttered. The brilliant lining of the mouth is therefore the result 

 of sexual selection and it evidently forms a part of the courtship 

 display. 



