The Black-footed Albatross 



It is, therefore, on account of the exactions of family cares upon the 

 adults that immature birds, or "brown goonies," are much more fre- 

 quently seen upon the high seas. 



"By Executive Order Xo. 1019, dated February 3, 1909, the 'Hawaiian Islands 

 Reservation' was established. This national bird preserve includes Laysan, Xecker, 

 and adjacent small islands, upon which great numbers of pelagic birds nest, such as 

 Albatrosses, Shearwaters, and Terns. Persistent rumors have circulated in the news- 

 papers of late, to the effect that Japanese were planning to land on the rookeries to 

 destroy every bird obtainable, the feathers to be saved for various commercial purposes 

 and the bodies to be made into fertilizer. The fact that not a few species, which are 

 confined in the breeding season to these small islands, would thus be exterminated, makes 

 the establishment of this preserve with little doubt the most important step, from a 

 strictly ornithological standpoint, in the history of bird preservation in this country. 

 The annihilation of species was threatened" {The Condor, March, igog). 



The fears expressed in the foregoing paragraph were unhappily 

 realized that same season. A party of feather-hunters, Japanese, but 

 acting under the orders of a certain dissolute German who had formerly 

 been connected with the 

 guano industry, landed 

 on Laysan and proceed- 

 ed to slaughter its feath- 

 ered inhabitants. In 

 January of the following 

 year the U. S. revenue 

 cutter Thetis visited the 

 distant scene, found and 

 captured the poachers, 

 twenty-three of them, 

 and returned to Hono- 

 lulu with the miscreants 

 and their booty, consist- 

 ing of the plumes of 

 upwards of quarter of a 

 million birds. A subse- 

 quent expedition report - 

 ed on the havoc 

 wrought:- 



"Here on every side 

 are bones bleaching in 

 the sun, showing where 



the poachers have piled the bodies of the birds as they stripped them of 

 wings and feathers. In the old open guano shed were seen the remains of 



Taken on Laysan Island, T. H. 



Photo by W. K. Fisher 



THE DUET 



1 Bulletin No. 42, Biol. Surv., 1012. 



I 9 8 7 



