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66 : THE CONDOR . Vol. XXII 
these September youngsters; the younger they are the deeper seems to be their 
shading. Wok 
During the season of 1920 we hope to be able to locate some nests of this 
species both on Tomales Point and Black’s Mountain, and the readers of THE 
CONDOR may rest assured that they will be duly advised through its columns if 
success crowns our efforts. 
San Francisco, February 2, 1920. 
A RETURN TO THE DAKOTA LAKE REGION 
By FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY 
(Continued from page 26) 
IN THE SHELTER OF ISLAND LAKE 
HE GEM of the Sweetwaters, to which the beautiful water fowl have 
learned to gather from far and near to raise their young, offers a rare 
opportunity for an ideal State Bird Refuge; but now, at the opening of 
the hunting season, from being a secure retreat where the birds are sure of 
peace and plenty, the lake becomes a center of bombardment, its hunting lodge 
opening on the most protected corner, where families were wont to gather on 
sunny afternoons to feed and rest. No wonder, then, that the good friend who 
first iock me to the lake, an ardent bird lover who had long heer working to 
protect the birds of the state, should suggest that, unable to prevent the dese- 
cration of this natural sanctuary, we should make a trip to the protected shores 
of Island Lake, near the Turtle Mountains, at the beginning of the open season. 
As she told me, a Chicago man who had retained his boyish interest in the 
birds of the region, had bought fifty feet of shore line on a lake two miles long. 
Two years after he had completed his purchase, unfortunately, the lake had 
gone dry, and for five or six years grain and hay had been raised on the bot- 
tom; but this year, although seeded to barley, the lake was full of water, large 
numbers of Ducks were already there, and with the northern flight it was ex- 
pected that, as in former years, one would see ‘‘more birds than water’’. 
Although we could not stay to see the northern flight, the day before the 
hunting season opened we started on what proved a three day’s automobile 
trip from Sweetwater Lake across the prairies to the Turtle Mountains and 
then back to Island Lake. After spending the summer on foot on the prairies 
it was exhilarating and mentally enlarging to go, map in hand, bowling rapidly 
along over the level miles, telling off town after town—Webster, Garski, Stark- 
weather, Cando, and Zion (a Dunkard settlement )—their relative importance 
shown by their grain elevators, some of which were filled from farms of two or 
three thousand acres; to send the Sparrows flying from the narrow strips of 
prairie flowers between the road and the harvest fields, strips whose purple — 
asters and wild sunflowers made bands of purple and gold; to look off on small 
lakes blue as the sky, wavered over by white-breasted Gulls; and to look far 
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