472 ME. W. B. ALEXANDER ON THE 



a site on the top of the bushes within the limits of the colony, and, rather than 

 utilise bushes only a few yards away from the rest of their species, they are 

 content to take up a position on the ground. At the time of our visit the 

 majority of the nests contained eggs, though many young birds had already 

 been hatched. All previous writers on the group have referred to the 

 absurd tameness of the Noddies : they have to be lifted from the nest in order 

 to see what it contains, though this has to be done with caution as they 

 give vicious pecks with their beaks. Many of them undoubtedly fall victims 

 to the cats, and were it not that these latter are kept down by the difficulty 

 of finding food at other seasons of the year, when they appear to feed chiefly 

 on crabs, it would doubtless not be long before the Noddies were exterminated. 

 As it is, their numbers are only exceeded by those of the Sooty Terns. 



Megalopterus tenuirostris melanops {Gould). Lesser Noddy. 



These birds were discovered on Pelsart Island by Gilbert in 1842, though 

 Stokes had previously observed their curious nests. Gilbert's remarkably 

 vivid account of their numbers and nesting-habits, first read by Gould at the 

 meeting of the Zoological Society on February 27, 1844, and published in 

 the P. Z. S. for that year, has been quoted by every writer who has since 

 dealt with this subspecies, for the colony on the Abrolhos is still its only 

 known breeding-place. The following quotations give an idea of the number 

 of birds at the time of Gilbert's visit. He wrote : — " I have seen many vast 

 flocks oE birds, but I must confess I was not at all prepared for the surprise 

 I experienced in witnessing the amazing clouds (literally speaking) which 

 these birds present when congregating in the evening .... even Audubon, 

 who has been so accustomed to see such vast flocks of the passenger pigeon, 

 could hardly avoid expressing surprise if he had an opportunity of seeing 

 these birds at sunset, moving in one immense mass over and around their 

 roosting-place ; while the noise of the old birds' quack and the piping whistle 

 of the young ones is almost deafening." I regret to have to record that 

 these great flights, like those of the passenger pigeon, are now a thing of 

 the past. Campbell wrote in 1890 : — " Now that a successful guano depot 

 has been established upon Pelsart Island, no doubt in time the limited supply 

 of mangrove trees will be used for fuel. What then will become of the 

 extraordinary flights of the Lesser Noddies as they go to and from their 

 fishing grounds? I trust the photographs I took will not soon be the ' light 

 of other days.' " Mr. Lipfert tells me that when he visited the Abrolhos 

 five years later, in 1894, the birds were still nesting on Pelsart Island, as 

 they were also at the time of his visit with Helms in 1897. Hall also found 

 them there in 1899. 



On Gibson's visit in 1907 they were only found on Wooded Island, so 

 that some time during the intervening eight years the whole colony moved 



