244 BULLETIN 121, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



a small boat they all flew off, and after circling about us a few times, 

 to satisfy their curiosity, they settled down on the water to watch us. 

 "We counted 204 nests in various stages of construction, closely 

 grouped together on the higher portions of the rock, which was 

 thickly covered with excrement, making the rocks quite slippery 

 and filling the small water puddles with a putrid, vile-smelling mix- 

 ture. Some of the nests had well-made foundations of sticks, but 

 most of them were made wholly or largely of seaweed, kelp, rock- 

 weed, grasses, feathers, and bark; they were generally lined with 

 grasses or seaweed, and many were decorated with green sprigs of fir, 

 spruce, cedar, or laurel; a few were still further ornamented with 

 gull's feathers, birch bark, or dead crabs, and one had a long curly 

 shaving in it. A typical nest measured 22 inches in diameter outside 

 and 9 inches inside; they were usually built up 4 or 5 inches, but 

 one was 9 inches high. Many of the nests were incomplete or empty, 

 but most of them contained from one to five fresh eggs. Two similar 

 colonies containing about 75 pairs each were noted a little farther 

 along the coast. We watched them through our high-power glasses 

 and saw them building their nests ; most of the seaweed was obtained 

 near by, the birds diving for it in deep water and bringing it up in 

 their bills; the sticks and green twigs were, of course, brought from 

 the mainland several miles away. Although they were not breeding 

 in the interior anywhere we frequently saw these cormorants flying 

 up the rivers, probably in search of fishing grounds. 



The most southern breeding resort of the double-crested cormorant 

 that I know of on the Atlantic coast is at Black Horse Ledge, a 

 precipitous crag of rough black rock, towering 60 or 70 feet up out 

 of the ocean off Penobscot Bay, Maine. I visited this rock on June 

 19, 1899, where I had some difficulty in landing and climbing up its 

 steep sides. I had seen eight or ten cormorants fly off as I approached 

 and the top of the rock was filthy with their excrement and swarm- 

 ing with flies, but no nests had been built. Mr. Ora W. Knight, who 

 told me about the colony, said that a few pairs bred thfere nearly 

 every year, but did not lay their eggs until late in June or in July. 

 A few pairs of herring gulls also nest on this rock. 

 . The most populous summer resort for this species that I have ever 

 seen is Lake Winnipegosis in Manitoba, a large shallow lake, about 

 120 miles long and averaging about 15 feet deep, with numerous 

 rocky shoals and low reefs of loose boulders. The whole country 

 around the lake is low, flat, and largely marshy, a fine country for 

 water fowl of many species. The waters of the lake are teeming 

 with fish, mostly white fish, pickerel, and pike, which furnish an 

 abundant food supply for thousands of cormorants, grebes, loons, 

 and pelicans. Numerous small islands and rocky reefs furnish con- 



