56 Wild Bird Guests 



times as they came in attracted by a wounded 

 comrade tied to a stake in the swamp as a decoy. 

 The plumes were then stripped from their backs 

 and the bodies left to rot. Sad as this is, it is by 

 no means the saddest part of the story. The 

 young birds which occupied most of the nests at 

 this season, and which were of course entirely 

 dependent on their parents for food, were left 

 to starve to death after pitifully calling, some- 

 times for days, for their parents who lay in the 

 swamp beneath with their backs torn out, that wo- 

 men might wear the looted plumes in their hats. 



If anything could be more outrageous than 

 this, surely it is the recent massacre of birds on 

 the Island of Laysan. In order to give an intel- 

 ligent idea of this affair, it is necessary to say a 

 few words about the island itself. 



To most of us the word "Laysan" means little 

 if anything more than a tiny dot on the map, 

 indicating the position of a wee coral island in the 

 Pacific about eight hundred miles northwest by 

 west from Honolulu ; but to the men who have 

 been there, the mere mention of it brings to the 

 mind a hundred pictures representing the joys 

 and sorrows, the festivals and the tragedies in the 

 lives of myriad birds which comprise perhaps 

 the most unique community of feathered beings 

 on the face of the earth. It is one of many tiny 



