60 



Prest, who was to act as guide, and who had sailed over that 

 morning from Grosse Isle, where we were to make our head^ 

 quarters. 



Transferring our stuff to a little seventeen-foot open lobster- 

 boat, we started on a cold beat of eight miles from Grand Entry 

 to Grosse Isle, where we landed at two o'clock in the afternoon. 

 During our sail across the harbor we had observed Gannets, 

 Herring Gulls, Common Terns, Red-breasted Mergansers, and 

 Black Ducks. 



We were met at the landing by a tip cart proudly drawn by 

 the only horse at Grosse Isle, and immediately set out for the 

 house of Ez Rankin, our boarding master, who, like Prest, was a 

 hardy young fisherman. 



As soon as we had disposed of our traps, and had gotten out 

 a collecting box or two, we started out for North Cape, a tre- 

 mendous headland which rose directly behind our boarding 

 house. We were informed by Prest that the Black Guil- 

 lemots or Sea Pigeons — or '' Wijens," as the fishermen call them 

 — ^nested in the face of this cliff. We found that the cliff had 

 numerous holes and crannies, in two of which we located nests 

 of the Guillemot, one of them containing two eggs, and the 

 other, one. 



We then visited a large marsh adjoining Grosse Isle, looking 

 for nests of Wilson's Snipe. It was toward evening, and the 

 marsh was simply alive with feeding Snipe. It was here that 

 we first had an opportunity to observe the very strange flight 

 of this Snipe. The bird heralds its appearance by a peculiar 

 whistling note, which is accredited to the very rapid movement 

 of the wings, and which can be heard long before the Snipe is 

 visible to the naked eye. The bird descends in wide circles, 

 making this whistling note, until it spies a suitable place for 

 feeding, when suddenly it drops headlong into the grass. Later 

 on in our stay at East Point we had a still better opportunity 

 to witness these flights, which usually occur in the morning and 

 evening, as a number of the birds frequented a swamp directly 

 behind our camp. 



The Snipe were exceptionally numerous in this swamp at 

 Grosse Isle. We flushed fifty birds in the course of an hour or so 



