252 BXJLLETIN 121, UNITED STATES NATIONAL, MUSEUM;. 



Of May. Their courtships are performed on the water. On the morning, 

 beautiful but extremely hot, of the 8th of that month, while rambling over one 

 of the keyes, I arrived at the entrance of a narrow and rather deep channel, 

 almost covered by the boughs of the mangroves and some tall canes — the only 

 tall canes I had hitherto observed among those islands. I paused, looked at 

 the water, and observing it to be full of fish, felt confident that no shark was 

 at hand. Cocking both locks of my gun, I quietly waded in. Curious sounds 

 now reached my ears, and as the fishes did not appear to mind me much, I 

 proceeded onward among them for perhaps a hundred yards, when I observed 

 that they had all disappeared. The sounds were loud and constantly renewed, 

 as if they came from a joyous multitude. The Inlet suddenly became quite 

 narrow and the water reached to my arm pits. At length I placed myself be- 

 hind some mangrove trunks, whence I could see a great number of cormorants 

 not more than fifteen or twenty yards from me. None of them, it seemed, 

 had seen or heard me ; they were engaged in going through their nuptial cere- 

 monies. The males, while swimming gracefully around the females, would 

 raise their wings and tail, draw their head over their back, swell out their 

 neck for an instant, and with a quick forward thrust of the head utter a rough, 

 guttural note, not unlike the cry of a pig. The female at this moment would 

 crouch as it were on the water, sinking into it, when her mate would sink 

 over her until nothing more than his head was to be seen, and soon afterwards 

 both sprung up and swam joyously around each other, croaking all the while. 

 Twenty or more pairs at a time were thus engaged. Indeed, the water was 

 covered with cormorants, and had I chosen 1 might have shot several of them. 

 I now advanced slowly toward them, when they stared at me as you might 

 stare at a goblin, and began to splash the water with their wings, many diving. 

 On my proceeding they all dispersed, either plunging beneath or flying off. 

 and making rapidly toward the mouth of the inlet. Only a few nests were on 

 the mangroves, and I looked upon the spot as analogous to the tournament 

 grounds of the pinnated grouse, although no battles took placa in my presence. 

 A few beautiful herons were sitting peaceably on their nests, the mosquitoes 

 were very abundant, large, ugly blue land crabs crawled among the mangroves, 

 hurrying toward their retreats, and I retired, as I had arrived, in perfect 

 silence. While proceeding, I could not help remarking the instinctive knowl- 

 edge of the fishes, and thought how curious it was that, as soon as they had 

 observed the cormorants' hole none had gone farther, as if they were well aware 

 of the danger, but preferred meeting me as I advanced toward the birds. . 



Nesting. — The most northern breeding colony of the Florida cor- 

 morant that I have heard of was well described by Mr. T, Gilbert 

 Pearson (1905) as he found it during the early days of June, 1904, 

 in Great Lake, among the cypress swamps of eastern North Caro- 

 lina, and surrounded by a heavy forest, far from the haunts of 

 man. On his former visit to the lake he had found 150 pairs of cor- 

 morants breeding here, but the colony has decreased in numbers 

 since. I quote from his description of the colony as follows: 



The colony at that time was found to be in the height of the breeding 

 season. The heavy nests of sticks and twigs occupied low-spreading cypress 

 trees standing solitary here and there in the water, usuaUy from fifty to 

 one hundred yards from shore. A number of the trees were occupied by the 

 domicile of a single pair of birds; others contained two, three, five, seven, or 

 eight nests ; one tree held sixteen and another thiry-six cradles of iliese great 



