216 BULiiETIN 121, UNITED STATES NATIONAL. MUSEUM. 



the Bahama Islands. Breeding grounds protected on Desecheo 

 Island reservation, Porto Eico. 



Winter range. — Practically the same as the breeding range. 



Casual records. — Accidental on the coast of Florida (Micco, Feb- 

 ruary 16, 1895.) 



Egg dates. — Mexican islands : Twenty-four records, April 29 to 

 December 10; twelve records. May 2 to 18. Swan Island, Caribbean 

 Sea : One record, March 31. 



MORUS BASSANUS (Linnaeus). 

 GANNET. 



HABITS. 



Day after day we had gazed, from the hilltops of the northern 

 Magdalens, across the waters of the stormy Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 toward the distant Labrador coast, where we could see looming up 

 on the horizon a lofty reddish mass of rock, the goal of our ambitions 

 and the mecca of many an American ornithologist. Bird Rock. At 

 last the day came sufficiently smooth for us to risk the trip in our 

 tiny craft, the only boat available. To visit and storm that almost 

 impregnable seabirds' fortress is risky enough in a seaworthy vessel, 

 for storms come up without much warning and the waves thunder at 

 the base of its almost perpendicular cliffs with such fury, that only 

 during the calmest weather can a landing be effected with safety 

 on a narrow beach. At the time of our visit the present comfortable 

 landing had not been completed. It is now no longer necessary to 

 be hoisted up in a crate, a hundred feet or more to the top of the 

 rock. 



Gannets were seen flying past us toward the rock, as they returned 

 from their fishing grounds and as we drew near we could see a swarm 

 of white birds circling about it. The setting sun shone full upon 

 its towering cliffs of red sandstone, deeply cut or carved by the ele- 

 ments into ledges and shelves of varying sizes and shapes; the 

 broader ledges seemed covered with snow and it was hard to believe 

 that such wide bands of white were really colonies of nesting gan- 

 nets. The whole side of the rock seemed to be covered with birds; 

 wherever there was room for them the gannets were sitting on their 

 nests on the wider ledges ; clouds of noisy kittiwakes were hovering 

 overhead or nesting on the smallest shelves of rock ; razor-billed auks 

 were breeding in the crevices near the top of the rock and the murres, 

 Brunnich, and the common, were sitting in long rows upon their eggs 

 on the narrower ledges. Such was the home of the gannet as I saw it 

 in 1904. 



The history of the gannet colonies of Bird Eock is interesting as 

 showing the effect of human agencies in the extermination of bird life. 



