io6 Director's Annual Report. 



their parents, but a few eggs were still to be seen, indicating an 

 extended period of nidification. 



Small fish seemed to be, if not the only, the chief food of this 

 tern. On more than one occasion I saw them fluttering to and fro 

 about the nest holding two silvery fish crossed in the beak. The 

 interesting part the white tern takes in the exploits of the man- o' -war 

 hawks will be described in the notes on that species. 



Diomedea immutabilis Roths. Gooney. 



Only one bird was seen alive, and I was able to .secure but one 

 from a Japane.se who had .shot it on the island. He informed me 

 that it had been taken early in the spring, and it was one of ten 

 birds — all they had been able to get during the year. 



The story of the Marcus Island colony of goonies is one of 

 death and extermination. In the beginning of the operations of 

 the Japanese company on the island goonies were fairly abundant. 

 Not being able to find guano by their crude methods, they devel- 

 oped a scheme whereby they were able to make a marketable com- 

 modity by killing the birds and boiling them down in great kettles. 

 The resultant, consisting of the flesh, bones and viscera, was 

 barreled and shipped to Japan where it was used as a fertilizer. 

 The long wing feathers of all the birds were pulled out and care- 

 fully preserved to be shipped to America and Europe and sold as 

 "eagle feathers", which were in great demand for trimming on 

 ladies' hats. The feathers from the breast were plucked off and 

 sold by the pound. A profitable business was thus developed, with 

 the deplorable result that within six years the entire colony of these 

 splendid birds has been exterminated. 



I was told that they had been so exceedingly abundant in for- 

 mer years that a man could kill three hundred birds in a day. The 

 last year or so, as the colony had dwindled down, it had been the 

 pradtice to kill the birds for the feathers only. All over the island 

 were found the heaps of white bones of the birds that had thus been 

 destroyed. I saw two or three eggs half buried in the sand that 

 had been lying there a long time, as they were bleached out white 

 and were very fragile. 



