THEC9nL?R 



Volume IX July-Augvist 1907 Number -4 



THE GREBES OF SOUTHERN OREGON 

 By WILLIAM L. FINLEY 



WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY HERMAN T. BOHLMAN 



FOR years the lake region of southern Oregon was the most profitable field in 

 the west for the plume hunter. Up to the summer of 1903 many, many 

 thousands of grebes and terns were slaughtered thru this region to supply 

 the millinery market. Scores of professional hunters shot these birds and shipped 

 out bales of the skins till now there are comparative!}^ few of these birds left about 

 lyower Klamath and Tule Eakes. This traffic in bird skins has been checked, but 

 it has never been stopped. 



After spending almost two months cruising these lakes during the summer of 

 1905, we found but one colony of Caspian Terns {Sterna caspia) on the Uower 

 Klamath, and two small colonies of Forster Terns (Sterna forsterf), one at the 

 north end of Tule Eake and the other along Klamath River. The American Black 

 Tern {Hydrochelidon nigra siirinamensis) nested in the same colonies with the 

 Forster Tern and were even more common. 



Formerly these velvet-plumaged birds were very common thruout this lake 

 region. A peculiar habit of the terns would soon have led to their extinction. As 

 soon as a hunter winged one of them and it fell fluttering to the water, instead of 

 the other terns flying away, they hovered about excited and inquisitive and were 

 shot as fast as the hunter could re-load. The wings and tail were all that the 

 hunters used from the body of the tern and these netted about forty cents a bird. 



The Western Grebe (^chmofhoriis occidentalis) was the greatest sufierer at 

 the hands of the market hunter. This diver, of the glistening-white breast and 

 the silvery-gray back was sought not without reason. The grebe hunters call the 

 skin of this bird fur rather than feathers, because it is so tough it can be scraped 

 and handled like a hide, and because of the thick warm plumage that seems much 



