X 
February 12, 13; 19^3 
Deception Island. 
This place has most everything, plenty of "flat" land for building 
sites and air strips, and plenty of running melt-water - even a "built-in" 
source of heat, and power perhaps. Thermal wells produce heat and power 
in New Zealand's North Island and in Italy. Whey not here where clouds of 
steam arise at low tide in the beach sands down in front of the old whale 
factor? 
For him who wishes to study Chinstraps, this should be the place. 
Some 250,000 Chinstraps live on the outer slopes of this old volcano. Ex¬ 
cellent accommodations could probably be arranged for at any one of the 
three bases or stations maintained here by as many different nations, Ar¬ 
gentina, Chile and the United Kingdom. 
A number of other birds are to be found nesting here as well. Cape 
Pigeons are around most of the year except between August 11 and Septem¬ 
ber 8. Common also is the Comincan gull, which in contrast to its fellows 
in the Argentine Islands much father south, is a, non-resident at Decep¬ 
tion Island. At Deception, we find also Sheath-bills (or Snow petrels), 
Wilson's storm petrels, the Giant petrel, swallow-tailed (or Antarctic 
terns), and Blue-eyed shags. Gentoo penguins are occasional; sometimes 
"touring parties"of 10 or a, dozen arrive, at times accompanied by single 
Adelies. At times Macaroni penguins are seen; three pairs have been 
seen nesting among the Chinstraps. Bird-wise this is an altogether in¬ 
teresting place. 
In the course of a brief period ashore threej^ or four Sheath-bills 
were noticed picking over a pile of rocks on shore, and behaving along th 
