140 
THE CONDOR 
VOL. V 
Though mainly habitants of fresh and brackish water, to some extent these 
birds also frequent sea islands. The most notable instance of this kind that has 
come to my attention is that of VVatling’s Island in the Bahamas. There, on July 
II, 1903, Mr. J. H. Riley of the National Museum found about fifty pairs breeding 
in the tall mangroves about a salt lagoon. The eggs were mostly hatched at that 
time and the young were in all stages of growth. Some of them, though not able to 
fly, had left the nests and were swimming about in the lagoon. The last of 
April, 1901, while Mr. Goldman and I were cruising around the shore of Yucatan in 
a small boat we landed for a short time on Contoy Island near Cape Catoche. 
Here we found many of these cormorants perched in the mangroves bordering 
some small salt lagoons, in company with white ibises and man-o’-war birds. In 
the trees were some old cormorant nests, all of which were unoccupied. 
Last March we camped on a small river at the bottom of a deep canyon in 
central Michoacan; this stream runs a tortuous course between high rocky walls 
LAKE CHAPALA, JALISCO. MEXICO, SHOWING LARGE BOAT ROOFED WITH RUSHES 
and at short intervals breaks into foaming rapids. Our camp was on a narrow 
sandy flat at the water’s edge, under the overhanging branches of some small ma- 
hogany and other trees that had secured a foothold in the talus at the foot of a cliff. 
As we lived here unsheltered except by the foliage, the happenings among the 
wild life of this solitary place were under constant observation. Among the inter- 
esting daily events was the passage up the river each morning of several Mexican 
cormorants, always flying singly, their glossy black plumage gleaming in the in- 
tense sunlight as they turned. They were evidently on their way to some fishing 
ground higher up, and several hours later — usually about midday — came back fol- 
lowing, as in the morning, all the wanderings of the river and giving a touch of 
completeness to the wild character of the surroundings. 
In the summer of 1897 we found them in abundance about the lagoons and 
streams of the coast country in southern Sinaloa, and especially at some shallow 
rapids in the Rosario River a few miles above the town of Rosario. During the 
early part of the rainy season the river was low and at the place mentioned a 
short descent in the boulder .strewn bed of the stream made a stretch, forty or fifty 
