MID-PACIFIC BIRD RESERVATION. 161 



THE SEA BIRDS OF LAYSAN ISLAND. 



But it is as a refuge for sea birds that these islands are chiefly 

 notable. The reefs and waters about Laysan and the other islands 

 fairly teem with fish, crustaceans, squids, and other forms of sea life, 

 thus affording food in abundance for sea fowl, as well as solitude and 

 protection for them and their young. For ages past these ocean 

 wanderers have found the islands an ideal home, and at certain sea- 

 sons swarmed there, covering every bit of available territory, and all 

 in all forming perhaps the most remarkable bird rookery in the 

 world. On Laysan alone several millions must breed every year. 



NESTING. 



Not all the birds that resort to this little island could possibly nest 

 on it at one and the same time, and, as the result of ages of experi- 

 ence, each species comes in turn and thus secures room. Even so, 

 however, nesting space has always been at a premium, and Schauins- 

 land, who spent three months on the island in 1896, not inaptly com- 

 pares the avian domestic arrangements there to a series of flats in a 

 large town. Thus the petrels and shearwaters nest in underground 

 burrows; above them in bushes nest the Laysan finch and the miller 

 bird, while the uppermost accommodations are taken by the boobies 

 and the man-o'-war birds. The breeding season covers practically 

 every month in the year. After biding their time, hither come to nest 

 thousands of terns, petrels, shearwaters, gannets, man-o'-war birds, 

 and albatrosses. In all more than two dozen species of land and sea 

 birds inhabit Laysan during the whole or part of the year. Prof. 

 Dill estimated that at the time of the visit of his party upward of a 

 million of sea birds were nesting on the island. (PL I.) 



THE ALBATROSS. 



Of all the birds that visit or live on Laysan the two species of alba- 

 trosses are the most notable. One of these, the black-footed albatross, 

 lives chiefly in the north Pacific, but its range includes our own coast, 

 from Alaska to California, and that of China and Japan. This is 

 the species which is a familiar sight daily to voyagers from San Fran- 

 cisco to Honolulu. When the outward-bound vessel is well off the 

 California coast it is sure to be sighted by a half dozen or more of 

 these black- footed albatrosses (or goonies, as they are known to the 

 sailors), which do not part company with it till near the Hawaiian 

 Islands. The other species, known as the Laysan albatross, is chiefly 

 a bird of the mid-Pacific, but it has been known to range to the east- 

 ward as far as the coast of Lower California. 



Albatrosses are true ocean wanderers, returning once a year to 

 some well-known island to rear their young. When they can trust these 

 to care for themselves they put to sea, and the land knows them no 



