200 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN DIVING BIRDS 



the razor-billed auk in what was then the most southern outpost of its 

 breeding range, from which it has since retreated. As we ap- 

 proached the ledge, after a five-hours' sail from Grand Manan, sev- 

 eral eiders flew off and a cloud of herring gulls arose; and, never 

 having seen at that time any of the great breeding grounds of the 

 Alcidae, we were particularly interested to see a number of black 

 birds, with white breasts, standing on the rock, which we knew were 

 razor-billed auks. As they began flying off their numbers were in- 

 creased by others scrambling out from the rocks, until we estimated 

 that at least a hundred had left the island; when we landed not 

 one was to be found, but when we concealed ourselves among the 

 rocks they began flying back over the ledge singly or in small flocks. 

 We lost no time in hunting for their eggs, some of which were in 

 plain sight under the rocks ; all of them were in sheltered places and 

 most of them were so well hidden in remote and dark crevices under 

 the large, loose rocks, that after two or three hours of hard work, 

 crawling into all sorts of holes and crevices, and feeling for the eggs 

 with a long-handled net, we succeeded in collecting only 37 eggs. 

 The eggs were laid on the bare rock, a single egg in each case. This 

 was an interesting experience for us at the time, as every new experi- 

 ence is, but it is also worth mentioning here as a record of conditions 

 that have passed; the breeding grounds of our larger, wilder, and 

 shyer birds are gradually becoming more and more restricted through 

 persecution and with the advance of civilization. The razor-billed 

 auk undoubtedly once bred still farther south, or west, along the 

 coast of Maine; Knight (1908) says "there is a dimly verified state- 

 ment that some 50 years ago or more it nested as far south as the 

 Cranberry Islands." It is said to have bred near Grand Manan as 

 recently as 1897, six years after my visit. 



But the story of its decrease does not end here; it has been sadly 

 depleted in numbers much farther north. On Funk Island, off the 

 coast of Newfoundland, the razor-billed auk, together with several 

 other species of sea birds, once bred abundantly, but frequent and 

 persistent raids, at which the birds were killed for their feathers or 

 for bait and their eggs gathered in large numbers for food, finally 

 reduced these populous colonies to a pitiful remnant. Mr. William 

 Palmer (1890), who visited Funk Island in 1887, writes of it as 

 follows: 



It is easy to imagine what must have been the abundance of these birds in 

 former years on this lonely, almost inaccessible ocean island. Great auks, 

 murres, razorbills, puffins, Arctic terns, gannets, and perhaps other species un- 

 doubtedly swarmed, each species having its own nesting ground, and never 

 molested except by an occasional visit from the now extinct Newfoundland red 

 man; but now, since the white fisherman began to plunder this, to them, food 

 and feather giving rock, how changed: To-day, but for the Arctic terns (which 

 are useless for food or feathers) and the puffins (which are in most cases im- 



