126 Bird -Lore 



This falling off in numbers, however, may be only temporary in character, 

 as Cormorants are known to have but few natural enemies, with the 

 exception of Fish Crows. These black marauders were seen continually 

 dodging about the colony. We saw one flying away with an egg stuck on 

 the end of its beak, and, in another case, one was observed devouring a nest 

 of young birds newly hatched. Many Fish Hawks breed along the shore 

 of the lake, and a few pairs of Great Blue Herons and Black-crowned Night 

 Herons had made their nests in the same trees occupied by the Cormorants. 

 In one Blue Heron's nest a young Cormorant was found crouching between 

 two frightened young Herons, apparently quite at home. 



The Cormorants breeding here on Great Lake probably retire to the 

 South upon the approach of winter; and the Cormorants observed along 

 the North Carolina coast during the colder months will doubtless prove to 

 be the Double-crested, whose summer home is in the far north. 



Some Early American Ornithologists 



^,.^ I. MARK CATESBY 



'=9- By WITMER STONE 



THE history of bird study in America dates back some three hundred 

 years, but the contributions of the first century are little more than 

 publications of myths and names of birds derived from the Indians, 

 with attempts on the part of the author to correlate them with well-known 

 birds of the Old World. 



Many of the early narratives of voyages to America or reports on the 

 early colonies devote a page or a chapter, as the case may be, to such 

 sketches of the bird life. The authors were not ornithologists, and their 

 productions have little value except as literary curiosities. 



In 1712, however, there came across the water a young man thirty-two 

 years of age — Mark Catesby by name — who was destined to produce the 

 first reliable work upon North American birds. Catesby was a true 

 naturalist, and, though we may smile at his crude pictures and his antiquated 

 style of composition, we appreciate the spirit which prompted his work and 

 recognize in him a brother ornithologist, well qualified for membership in 

 the American Ornithologists' Union, had that body been in existence in 

 his day. 



Catesby was born in England in 1679 or 1680, and, though he had "an 

 early inclination to search after plants and other productions of nature," it 

 was "much suppressed by his residing too far from London, the center of 

 all science" ; just where he did live, however, he does not tell us. His 



