July, 1914 
COMMUNICATIONS 
187 
FIELD EXPERIENCES ON THE COAST OF 
CHILE 
Editor The Condok: 
On my return from Juan Fernandez 
Island I received your letter, but regret to 
say that the package of Condors which you 
so kindly forwarded could not be located at 
the Valparaiso postoffice. They would cer- 
tainly have been appreciated, as United 
States publications come high down here. 
Mrs. Beck was nearly speechless when 
charged fifty cents for a fifteen cent Amer- 
ican magazine in Lima, Peru. 
Retrieving hummingbirds on Juan Fer- 
nandez was like retrieving mountain goats 
in cliffy canyons of the Rocky Mountains, 
if the published yarns of such feats be true. 
One had to lay down his gun and climb 
down by tree roots, at times holding by one 
hand so as to secure a hold with the other 
on the rocky ledge below and search amid 
ferns and grass for his bird. One beauty, I 
remember in particular, was shot in the 
edge of the trail at the top of the mountain 
where some sixty years ago an English man- 
of-war’s crew erected a tablet in memory of 
Alexander Selkirk, the well known Robinson 
Crusoe who spent four years and four 
months in complete solitude on the island, 
if the tablet be believed. The bird dropped 
only thirty feet, but it was necessary to go 
below and climb up over roots on the face 
of the cliff, holding on to grass stems or 
loose rocks that in some places gave way 
at a touch. 
Pigeon collecting there also was different 
from California styles. One would take a 
boat and row along the shore, and the pig- 
eons flew by from rocky perches as Baird 
Cormorants might do in home waters. The 
Sparrow Hawks, though, acted the same as 
our home birds; and I even flushed a pair 
of California Quail one day to my great sur- 
prise. The quail had been introduced a few 
years before and were increasing, so the 
natives said. The first day on the island, 
when at the edge of the forest I dropped my 
hand into the pocket of the sleeveless shoot- 
ing coat for shells, the odor in the air took 
me back to the hills of Monterey. How like 
the sage-brush smell it was; and it was the 
sage-brush smell, carried all the way from 
Toro Canyon, Monterey County! The coat 
had not been used since the first day of the 
quail season the year before, and it had 
never been emptied of the debris accumu- 
lated when followng the elusive birds on 
brush-covered hillsides. And speaking fur- 
ther of California quail, they were common 
in the Valparaiso markets both dead and 
alive, costing about ten cents apiece. I took 
a snap at a cagefull on the street and heard 
several calling just back of the town in the 
canyons. 
Changing the subject, you know that 
skeleton of the giant cuttle-fish (is it?) in 
the Golden Gate Park Museum? Do not 
some members of the squid family get about 
as large? I still remember (can it be thirty 
years back?) that old geography picture: 
the two sailors working with all their might 
chopping at the huge tentacles of a giant 
cuttle-fish that had grasped their boat 
while their sailing ship was beating up a 
mile or more away. Will you please tell me 
what part of the waters of the globe those 
monsters inhabit? If I can find out, I intend 
to give that locality a wide berth in this 
collecting business. I had thought the squids 
were night feeders, from the statements of 
my Monterey Bay fishermen friends; but 
collecting one day about six miles off Val- 
paraiso, alone as usual, I noticed a bunch of 
kelp a short distance from me being agi- 
tated more than seemed natural by the light 
wind and sea, so rowed up and it was not 
kelp, but a school of squid feeding. They 
were only about four or five feet long; but 
to see those five or six long feelers rise out 
a foot or two above the water, reach for- 
ward and back toward the mouth about four 
times a minute — ugh! They were but fif- 
teen or twenty feet away at times and could 
be seen perfectly; and then looking off, why 
there were acres of them! Schools of four 
or five and schools of hundreds. Birds were 
feeding among them, terns, shearwaters and 
gulls, on small shrimps, I found on dissec- 
tion. But suppose they had been those 
giant relatives figured so graphically in the 
geography of my youth. Only a shrimp 
would I have been to one of those big fel- 
lows. I saw dozens of the bodies of these 
five-footers on the beach at Corral when 
coming south, and deliver me from any 
close acquaintance with relatives as large 
sized as that skeleton in the museum, 
please! 
I made my first acquaintance with the 
Steamer Ducks here. With most of them it 
was a distant acquaintance. There are two 
or three particular birds near town here 
that if ever I get rich will see me again. In 
that case. I’m coming dov.m here with a 
motor boat capable of twenty miles an hour, 
and a bag of salt, and if I don’t sprinkle 
their tails it will be because they make for 
the kelp instead of the open water. Though 
they cannot fly, my best efforts with the 
oars take me about two feet to their three. 
