THE DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANT. 5 



as it is not well known to the people about Gaspe. While the 

 inhabited trees are evidently being killed by the deposits of fresh 

 guano that copiously whitewash their leaves, trunks, branches, 

 and the surrounding ground, many of them still retain enough 

 vitality to put forth a few sickly leaves, and but few of them have 

 been dead long enough to be rotten and brittle, a condition which 

 occurs very shortly after the death of trees of this species. 

 Though this colony is composed of about sixty adults there are 

 probably twice as many juvenile and non-breeding birds at- 

 tached to it and I estimate the total population of this rookery 

 at approximately 180 birds. 



Nearly opposite Three-runs and across the bay is a con- 

 siderably larger rookery on a part of the broken cliffs locally 

 known as Gull bay. Here the nesting is directly upon the broken 

 ledges which rise some 120 feet from the sea. The nests are 

 scattered about the rock face at various altitudes. Some nests 

 are quite close to the bottom, others are just below the crest. 

 They are on open shelves, behind jutting spurs, and in fractures 

 in the face. The number was difficult to estimate, but from the 

 birds visible, I should judge there were about three times as 

 many here as at Three-runs, making about 540 individuals in 

 all. 



There is at least one other cormorant rookery reported in 

 the vicinity, located around the point of Cape Gaspe and near 

 Cape Rosier, but we did not visit it. 



Though it had been reported that the Perc rock birds fre- 

 quented Gaspe harbour and the salmon river mouths emptying 

 into it, we saw no supporting evidence of it. Though we made 

 the trip by water between Perce and Gaspe three times at various 

 hours of the afternoon and early evening when the birds were 

 flying homewards, we saw no cormorants between Cape St. 

 Peter and Perc6 rock and observed very few within Gaspe bay to 

 seaward of the before mentioned nesting sites Three-runs and 

 Gull bay. Whether the cormorants that are said to nest near 

 Cape Rosier visit the harbour waters and their tributaries we 

 cannot say; we saw no evidence of it. There is a break in the 

 hills through which such birds might come and go, but we had 

 little opportunity to observe fly lines through it, and from the 



