A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

 DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ of the Audubon Societies 



Vol. VII March — April, 1905 No. 2 



The Cormorants of Great Lake 



By T. GILBERT PEARSON 



With photographs from nature by the author 



HIDDEN among the cypress swamps of eastern North Carolina there 

 lies a beautiful sheet of water known as Great Lake. Roughly esti- 

 mated, it is about five by seven miles in extent, and is the largest of 

 an irregular chain of lakes extending across the counties of Jones and 

 Craven. A heavy forest surrounds it, which for two-thirds the distance is a 

 dense cypress swamp reaching away for miles in its unbroken, primitive 

 condition. There are few human habitations in this territory, and many of 

 the wild tenants of the forest are still found in their original abundance. 

 This sequestered lake is never disturbed by the passing of a boat, except at 

 intervals of a year or more, when some adventurous hunter carries his canoe 

 a long distance through the tangles of the swamps and camps for a brief 

 time upon its shores. 



Great Lake is the summer abode of the only colony of Florida Cormo- 

 rants known to breed in North Carolina. A strong desire to become more 

 familiar with the habits and activities of these wary birds led me to journey 

 to this region last summer during the early days of June. As our canoe 

 emerged from the heavy growth of cypress trees fringing the lake, we saw, 

 about a mile distant, the whitened trees which compose the rookery. These 

 were adorned with numerous black spots which, upon a closer approach, 

 proved to be Cormorants. The colony at that time was found to be in the 

 height of the breeding season. The heavy nests of sticks and twigs occu- 

 pied low-spreading cypress trees standing solitary here and there in the 

 water, usually from fifty to one hundred yards from shore. A number of 

 the trees were occupied by the domicile of a single pair of birds; others 

 contained two, three, five, seven or eight nests; one tree held sixteen and 

 another thirty-six cradles of these great birds. One hundred and twenty- 

 one homes of the Cormorants were counted, twenty-eight trees in all being 

 used for their accommodation. 



