BIRDS FOUND NEAR SHORE OR IN BAYS 51 



with fresh sea moss. From the amount of guano used, 

 and the solidity with which most of these structures 

 had become cemented to the rock, — indeed, they seemed 

 a part of the rock itself, — I judged that they had been 

 handed down from one cormorant generation to another, 

 for many years. Yet each season sees them carefully 

 redecorated on the outside with new, bright-colored 

 seaweed. This weed is seldom picked up on the rocks, 

 but is freshly pulled from the bed of the ocean near 

 shore, the birds diving in some places more than fifty 

 feet. Upon timing one, I found it was under water 

 two and one half minutes; it then reappeared with 

 a bill full of scarlet algse. Here again the mischievous 

 gulls are in evidence, and the poor Cormorant must guard 

 his gayly trimmed nest, or every bit of his hard-earned 

 moss will be stolen. After the five chalky green "eggs 

 are laid his vigilance must never relax, for cormorant 

 eggs and cormorant babies are the most delicious morsels 

 in a sea gull's menu. So the great awkward birds are 

 ever craning their long necks this way and that, ■^- 

 watching before, behind, on every side, for the white- 

 winged robbers. The effect is that, from any point of 

 view, a cormorant rookery is a weird sight. As the 

 days go by, the pretty nests blossom one by one with 

 newly hatched Cormorants, the very homeliest of all 

 created things. Their ungainly bodies are encased in a 

 naked, greasy black skin, and their preternaturally long 

 necks end in immense mouths, so that they resemble 

 huge polliwogs. Like polliwogs, also, they are ever 

 wriggling- For the first few days the young Cormorants 



