•LOGIST. 
91 
Pumpkin Rock and its Summer 
Residents. 
It was my good fortune to have the chance 
of visiting a breeding place of the Wilson and 
Arctic Ter n and L each ’s Petrel, during the 
past summer, and it was July 9 , 1888 , that I, 
in company with three friends, rowed a 16 -foot 
dory three or four miles, from an island we 
were camping on, to Pumpkin, as it is called 
by the fishermen. 
This island is the end of a chain that puts 
out from the mainland about eight miles into 
the ocean, and is a number of miles east of 
the mouth of the Kennebec river on the coast 
of Maine. The southern and outer end of the 
island rises rather sharply to a height of at 
least forty feet above sea level, and is a solid 
mass of whitish quartz rock, sloping to the 
north till it ends in low lying reefs that are 
covered by the water at high tide. It is not 
over two acres in extent, including sides. 
Part of the northern slope is covered by a thin 
turf, with here and there small clumps of the 
low bushes commonly found on the seashore. 
When we first landed, there were but few 
birds to be seen, but we did not have to go far 
before they commenced to rise until the air 
was literally alive with the terns. They rise 
up hundreds of feet and then dart down to 
within a few inches of our heads, swinging 
around here and there so thick and fast that 
it is almost impossible to follow one with the 
eye, and all the time keeping up such a chat¬ 
tering that one can hardly hear himself talk. 
Their cry is beyond description on paper. 
We found their nests in all places imaginable; 
some on small hammocks with a matting of 
grass for a nest, others on the bare rocks that 
feel quite warm to the touch, and they were 
also in slight depressions amongst the drift 
stuff and sand, in a small cove where it had 
been thrown up by the last full tides. There 
were one, two, and three eggs in a nest, mostly 
twos, and they were in all stages of incubation, 
as we found on blowing a few sets. One young 
one was found which was apparently not over 
one day old. The identification of the eggs 
could not be positive without some means of 
trapping the bird on the nest which we did 
not have. 
We found the burrows of the Leach’s Petrel 
without any difficulty; they were generally 
near small clumps of bushes and twisted 
around amongst the roots, often being three 
or four feet long, though most of the time 
only just under the sod. We dug out a num¬ 
ber, and in each case found the bird and one 
egg at the end of the burrow where it was 
hollowed out to a considerable extent. The 
dirt in these nests was perfectly dry, and in 
some cases there were a few feathers and 
small fish bones such as would be left by a 
sitting bird. The birds would bite some when 
putting the hand in, which would be the only 
demonstration they made, with the exception 
that some of them would squirt from their 
mouth a half tea-spoonful of oil which had a 
very rank smell. After lotting them go they 
immediately took off and did not appear again. 
The fishermen say the males are never seen 
near the breeding place. A few days after wo 
had a chance to see where they kept them¬ 
selves. While sailing several miles out at sea, 
we ran on to a very large flock of Petrels 
sitting in the water, only getting up as we 
came too near. They shifted along a little 
way and then settled down again; there was 
only a light breeze and we had a fine chance 
to watch them. One thing in particular which 
attracted our attention was seeing them rise 
up and run on top of the water with closed 
wings, often as far as five or six feet, some¬ 
thing I have never seen any account of. By 
92 
ORNITt 
cutting up fish liver, we could toll them right 
alongside of the boat, and we could have 
caught them in our hands if they had only 
kept still long enough. We also found on the 
island quite a large colony of Bank Swallows, 
which had burrowed under the sod right on 
top of a ledge, their nest being on the rock 
with not over three inches of turf over them. 
The young had all left the nests in all that we 
examined. I mention this as I think it an 
unusual nesting site of this swallow. To end 
up I want to enter a protest against the prac¬ 
tice of so-called city sportsmen who go on to 
such islands as this one and shoot birds until 
they are tired, break eggs for fun, and dig up 
the Petrels and wring their necks. The Terns 
they sometimes take, oftener just the wings, 
leaving the bodies to rot; evidence of which I 
saw. The fishermen claim they have driven 
the Terns off one island, and that they are 
only as one to ten to what they were ten years 
ago on this island, since which time some of 
the larger islands near by have become sum¬ 
mer resorts. Such as these are the ones that 
are doing the most towards exterminating and 
driving away our birds from their accustomed 
breeding places; not, as is often made the hue 
and cry of the daily newspapers, the hunters 
and taxidermists. Elmer T. Judd. 
Fairfield County, Conn. 
Q.&O. XIV. June. ia£S9 p.91-92 
