338 



Bird -Lore 



a kind of roosting place at this season, and the Ducks come in by the hun- 

 dreds in the evening and depart in the morning. We found the people liv- 

 ing about this locality, as a rule, very careful about shooting Ducks in the 

 nesting season ; but after the young are partly grown they make no bones 

 about killing in season or out. There was no hunting in the locality while 

 we were there, but later in the season this is the great shooting ground of 

 the market hunters. 



"Later we had our boat hauled overland to White Lake, and set out to 

 investigate the Lower Klamath Lake. The south end of the Lower 

 Klamath was formerly a great breeding ground for the Western Grebe, but 

 these colonies were largely destroyed by hunters. We cruised over a large part 

 of the lake, and found that the large rookeries of Cormorants, Grebes, 

 White Pelicans, Great Blue Herons, California Gulls and Caspian Terns 

 form one of the most extensive bird colonies we have ever seen. Doubt- 

 less this locality has never been disturbed to any extent by man. This is the 

 great breeding ground of that whole region. 



"It would be difficult to say how many birds are breeding about this one 

 locality, but, as near as we could estimate, we judged there were about five 



YOUNG WHITE PELICANS IN AN OREGON ROOKERY 



Photographed by Finley and Bohlman 



hundred nests of the Caspian Tern, and this was the only colony. There 

 were from fifty to one hundred Great Blue Herons nesting on the tule 

 beds. There were three large colonies near by of the California Gull; the 

 largest contained about one thousand pairs of birds and the next about six 

 hundred. The Western Grebes were nesting all along the edges of the tule 

 islands and their nests w^ere only a few feet apart. On one side of a small 



