jSirli-lore 



A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

 DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ of the Audubon Societies 



Vol. Ill 



January — February, 1901 



No. 1 



Pelican Island Revisited 



BY FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



With photographs from nature by the author 



HE results of observations on the inhabitants of Pelican 

 Island, in the Indian River, Florida, made during four 

 days in March, 1898, have already been recorded* in 

 some detail, and it is proposed to add here only certain 

 supplementary notes, secured April 24, 1900. Being armed 

 with a far more effective battery of cameras, I obtained, on this second 

 visit, photographs of several phases of Pelican life, notably views of the 

 birds on the wing, which it had proved impossible to make on my pre- 

 vious trip to the island. 



These pictures, it may be of interest to explain, were taken with a 

 reflecting camera, fitted with a focal-plane shutter, similar to the camera 

 described in BiRD-LoRE for April, 1899. While the wing-beats of the 

 Brown Pehcan are comparatively slow, former experience showed that a 

 lens shutter was by no means rapid enough to take satisfactory pictures 

 of the birds in flight. With the focal-plane shutter, however, suffi- 

 ciently fast exposures were made to show the wing at every stage of the 

 stroke and with enough definition to enable one to see clearly the sepa- 

 ration of the outer primaries. 



Returning to Pelican Island one month later in the year than the 

 date of my 1898 visit, I had expected to find few or no eggs and most 

 of the young of the year with flight feathers appearing or fully devel- 

 oped. There was, however, no apparent difference in the proportionate 

 number of eggs or age of the young birds, and it required a careful 

 census, and an analysis of it, to bring out the fact that the breeding 

 season was somewhat more advanced in 1900, and, I regret to say, that 

 the population of the island had decreased. 



* ' Bird Studies with a Camera,' Vol. II, pp. 191-214. 



