420 Bird - Lore 



A more complete statement of the Field Agents' work will be published 

 with this report. 



AUDUBON WARDEN WORK 



The reports of our warden force for the past year indicate an average sea- 

 son for the birds. With two exceptions the rookeries appear not to have been 

 molested by men bent on devastation, but, as usual, some havoc has been 

 wrought by the elements. 



In July a severe storm swept the Louisiana coast. High tides washed over 

 many of the low-lying islets in the Breton Island Bird Reservation where 

 Warden William Sprinkle and his son, Levi Sprinkle, are on duty patrolling 

 the islands in our Audubon patrol-boat 'Royal Tern.' Probably two hun- 

 dred thousand young birds lost their lives by that storm, as the large rook- 

 eries on the following islands were swept entirely bare at the height of the 

 breeding-season — Sundown, Brash and Martin Islands; Martin and Mitchell 

 Key, Sam Holmes Isle; Dead Man's Island; Battledore, Errols, Chandelier, 

 North, Freemason's, and North Harbor Keys. The colonies on Islands Nos. 

 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, ID, II, 12, 13, 14, and 15, as well as the colonies on Butcher's 

 Island, and on the Carroll Islands, seem not to have been affected extensively 

 by the storm. 



The Snowy Egrets on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia continue to 

 show a marked increase in numbers. This statement is also true of the large 

 Egrets on the Georgia coast. 



Two of our best bird-colonies were destroyed the past season. According 

 to Stanley Hanson, Government Bird Reservation Inspector, of Fort Myers, 

 Florida, two men voluntarily took possession of Alligator Bay Egret rookery 

 early in the season, and stated that if the Association would pay for their 

 services no harm would come to the birds. This was just at the time when our 

 funds for Egret protection were so low that it was impossible to raise the neces- 

 sary funds to insure the guarding of the rookery before it was too late. It was 

 the intention of these two men to camp on the island until the colony should 

 become ripe, and then kill the birds for the sake of their plumes. By 'ripe,' 

 in the parlance of the Florida plume-hunter, is meant the time of the season 

 when the eggs have hatched, because then the old Egrets will refuse to abandon 

 the rookery, even if they see their companions shot down all around them. 

 Just before these two men were ready for their shooting three other plume- 

 hunters came in and chased them away. The newcomers then proceeded to 

 'shoot up' the rookery, after which they cut down the bushes, piled them up 

 and burned them, with the result that what last year was the most populous 

 Egret rookery in Florida is now as desolate as a Belgian village. Six hundred 

 dollars would have saved the colony. 



The largest Herring Gull colony on the coast of Maine for some time has 

 been the 30-acre island of No-Man's-Land. Last year it came into possession 



