Penobscot Bay, Maine
1896 
July 6
  A beautiful midsummer day with light, steady S. E. to S. W. wind and 
sky clear in places, in others veiled in thin clouds which in passing
over the sun obscured its rays but slightly.
  As a heavy sea raised by the late easterly storm was breaking over the 
outer ledges we did not extend our sail this morning beyond Lower
Mark Island where we landed at 9 A.M. without difficulty and spent 
three hours looking for & photographing Terns' nests.
  Lower Mark Island. A round-topped island of about 2.5 acres with gently 
sloping sides, the summit perhaps 40 feet above high water, the
sides and summit curved everywhere with the densest possible growth 
of English grass & white clover intermixed with various wild flowers, 
with large beds of thistles & other lusty weeds scattered here & there, 
a few plum bushes growing in crannies among the rocks and three 
or four green but stunted balsams, 15 or 18 feet, in height, standing 
out conspicuously against the sky at the N. E. of extremity of the high 
land. A few large, rounded boulders were distributed in groups & singly 
near the shores and over most of the upland as well as near 
high-tide mark ledges of light-gray stone roughened by [delete]the effects of[/delete] exposure to 
the weather and with jutting points and angles showed themselves 
more or less conspicuously. On these ledges we found a number 
of Terns' nests two of which had six eggs each and one five eggs. 
I spent most of the forenoon photographing the nests while Watrous & Conary 
searched for the nest of the Sheldrake that we saw fly off 
the island on the evening of the 3rd. Their zeal was beginning
to flag when some fishermen who came along close in shore told them 
that they had seen the Sheldrake about the island constantly 
of late. This encouraged them to renewed efforts and they trampled 
down on the cap every bed of weeds & tall grass dense enough 
to be a likely place for a nest. They found no less than four