20 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



When handled, it secretes from its bill a yellowish substance of strong, rather 

 objectionable odor. The petrel nest is at the end of a burrow perhaps two feet 

 long and generally two to four inches under the surface of the ground but fre- 

 quently under rocks. The petrel lays one white egg. Often this egg has very fine 

 pinkish red spots at the larger end. The young petrel is a delightful little object, 

 covered with down for the first month or so of its existence and almost as weird 

 as its parents but not resembling them at all except in webbed feet and humped 

 bill. Occasionally the petrels are so late in returning that some of the young are 

 frozen before they are large enough to fly. 



The petrel is perhaps the most interesting of the Little Duck bird colony. 

 One of the birds remains in the burrow on the nest in the daytime and the other 

 comes in at night to take its place. Some of the most interesting nights I have 

 ever spent hav2 been on Little Duck waiting for the petrels to come home. For 

 an hour or more before sundown the gulls are returning to the island continuously 

 and as each gull seems to have a great deal to say to his neighbors, the air is filled 

 with a perfect bedlam of shouts and choruses which continue after hj sun sets. 

 As the darkness comes on the gulls become less and less noisy and gradually their 

 stories seem to be told and they are quieter and quieter until only here and there 

 some old gull con inu s to shout. Finally the last word has been said and Little 

 Duck is absolutely still for perhaps a half hour until darkness has come and per- 

 haps until you are beginning to think that there are no petrels coming in from the 

 ocean. Very soon, however, you will ses something fly swiftly past in the night 

 and then you hear the peculiar twitter of the returning petrel as it flutters around 

 you in search of its nest, and you will also hear the answer, an entirely different 

 note, from the other petrel waiting at the mouth of the burrow for its mate. 

 The flutter and twitter of the petrel continues through the night until an hour or 

 so before sunrise, which we might call the hour of silence, is finally broken by the 

 scream of a waking gull followed immediately by shrieks from thousands of throats 

 and the day starts. 



The birds on Little Duck island have a few enemies — ■ an occasional snake 

 destroys a petrel home and sometimes a crow is brave enough to taste a gull's 

 egg, while the parent gull is absent, and in August and later there is often a duck 

 hawk or an eagle or even a smaller hawk flying around the island looking for young 

 gulls, but altogether the inhabitants of the island seem to be generally undis- 

 turbed and let us hope they are content with their existence. 



Seneca Indian Monument at Canandaigua. Some years ago in 

 making excavation necessary for the parking of grounds about the 

 swimming school at the lake edge in the city of Canandaigua, a 

 Seneca burial was uncovered which contained the skeletons of 

 sixteen males lying in a half circle with feet toward the center and 

 faces toward the lake. These remains were reinterred within the 

 grounds and grove of the park and a rough stone monument placed 

 above them. To this stone has now been attached a suitable bronze 

 inscription tablet, suggested by this office and paid for by Mrs 

 Frederick F. Thompson. 



