PARRAKEET ISLANDS. 233 



quantity to sustain them, so that each pair can find a place to de- 

 posit its eggs. The pertinacity, too, with which they chng to the 

 immediate vicinity of their breeding place is remarkable. But a 

 very short distance from an island where there are thousands, it is 

 a comparatively uncommon thing to see a puffin. The most ex- 

 tensive of these breeding places appears to be an island near the 

 harbor of Bradore, visited by Audubon in 1833, of which he has 

 written so graphic and instructive an account. The one, however, 

 that I had an opportunity of visiting cannot be much behind it in 

 point of the numbers of the birds breeding on it ; and during a stay 

 of three days I had ample opportunity of examining the island and 

 noting the manners of its curious population. My visit was on the 

 25th, 26th, and 27th of July. Let a short extract from my journal 

 describe our approach to the island. 



''We were now within less than a mile from the island, towards 

 which all eyes were anxiously turned, and still not a bird met our 

 gaze. But a few minutes more, however, and they commenced to 

 appear, flying around the boat or resting on the water ; all were 

 'parrakeets,' and 'tinkers,' except now and then a solitary ' turre.' 

 They were tamer than I had ever seen birds before, almost flying 

 into our little whale boat ; it was hard to restrain from firing. 

 As we rounded the island close to the shore, they came tumbling 

 out of their holes by hundreds, and, with the thousands we disturbed 

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

 around us, no longer flying in flocks, but forming one dense, con- 

 tinuous mass, and yet not a gun had been fired. 



"The Parrakeet Islands are three in number, lying along the 

 western shore of Blanc Sablon Bay, just at its mouth. The one I 

 visited is the innermost as well as the largest, though the others are 

 equally crammed with the birds. It is about a mile in circumfer- 

 ence ; in shape almost a perfect semicircle, with two points stretch- 

 ing out and inclosing a snug cove, where only can a landing be 

 effected with safety. It is abrupt and precipitous on three sides, the 

 fourth sloping gradually down to the cove. The top is nearly flat, 

 and covered with a rather luxuriant growth of grass, the soil being 

 15* 



