176 
TlOi C(')NDOR 
Vol. XIII 
A reliable estimate is difficult to make, but I doubt if over 20,000 Murres now 
haul out on the southeast Farallon and its outliers. 
While reviewing a ledge one day in company with Mr. J. Rowley, I noticed a 
bird which apparently had its back to us while all the others were facing. Closer 
examination showed that it too was facing us. Its underparts were the same color 
that a Murre’s back should be, sooty black. A lucky shot secured it, and it proved 
to be a male bird with breeding organs in active condition, a melanistic specimen 
without a trace of white in its plumage. 
6. Larus occidentalis. Western Gull. These birds afforded the dominant 
note of life on the West End, the fashionable residence quarter of the Farallones. 
The}' nested anywhere from beach to pinnacle, and a careful examination of near a 
thousand nests discovered a singular uniformity of type in coloring of the eggs. 
This is evidently a closely inbred colony, free for ages from admixture or disturbing 
influences. I have seen a four times greater variation in a small colony of not forty 
pairs on a rock off the coast of Washington, debatable ground between 
occidentalis and glaacescens. While most nests contained three eggs, three 
clutches of four w'ere found, the eggs being in each instance unquestionably the 
product of a single bird. 
In several instances I detected cannibalism, if such a harsh term can be ap- 
plied to a habit of sampling eggs of the same species. In each case the offender 
appeared to have leisure for the enjoyment of the unlawful feast, but it is an open 
question whether they were cases of piracy or worse. Certainly the gulls are very 
jealous of each other, and the .shifting readjustment wffiich accompanies the pro- 
gress of the bird-man is always attended with many sharp passages-at-arms among 
the gulls. Conscience plays a proper part and the jealous owner always wins. 
Possibly three thousand pairs nested this season. 
7. Larus heermanni. Heermann Gull. Only one individual twice seen. 
The second time he was found in company with Western Gulls, a member of a 
Murre-marauding company. 
8. Oceanodroma kaedingi. Kaeding Petrel. Our tents were finally pitched 
under the lee of Tower Hill on the south side, and within hailing distance of the 
Government Wireless Station. Near us were several half-ruined stone walls, the 
relics of occupation by the eggers, or possibly by their predecessors, the Russian 
sea-otter hunters. These walls resounded nightly to the incessant cries of Petrels 
as did every other wall on the island. On the evening of May 30, Leon Garland 
one of the wireless operators, secured a white-rumped petrel in his tent, whither it 
had been attracted by the light. On the morning of the 3rd of June, Mr. Garland 
brought in another Kaeding Petrel, which he had secured in one of these old stone 
walls near his tent, and he declared that the bird had been found sitting on an egg, 
although the latter was liroken. Mr. Rowley joined forces with him and spent the 
best part of the day tearing down the walls of this and neighboring enclosures. 
Three more specimens were found along with considerable numbers of homochroa, 
which occupied the same area; and two eggs of each species, the first of the season, 
rewarded the search. Although precisely similar conditions obtain elsewhere, no 
other Kaeding Petrels were encountered on the Farallones 
9. Oceanodroma homochroa. Cones Petrel. Either this species has notably in- 
creased of late, or else earlier visitors were inclined to underestimate its numbers. 
We found them well distributed throughout the main island. Not only are all 
the stone walls alive with them, but they occupy the minor rock-slides along with the 
Cassin Auklet, and they even burrow in the level ground in front of the keepers’ 
houses. In investigating the drift area on Franconia beach, we found almost 
