Into mid-August, three adults and an immature Glossy Ibis 
frequented nearby Shelburne Bay, VT, on the east shore of Lake 
Champlain (Theodore Murin, pers. comm.). No band was observed, but 
this immature may have been 966-51852, the eldest of the July 23 young. 
In early September, Murin observed two immatures at the south end of 
an old railroad causeway between Colchester and South Hero, VT. Each 
was banded on the left tarsus, and undoubtedly were two of the three 
siblings banded on the nest during late July. On October 6, this writer and 
Amtrak passenger saw a Glossy Ibis lift with Ring-billed Gulls from a 
cornfield south of Rouses Point, flushed by the passing northbound 
"Adirondack/' The field is about 37 miles north of Four Brothers and 27 
miles northwest of the Vermont causeway where the previous sighting 
was made. 
Lake water levels were quite low in 1999, due to drought, standing just 
above 96 feet in mid-May and dropping to just over 94 feet by late 
August, some three feet lower than the year before and perhaps a foot 
below average. This may have improved feeding depths, resulting in a 
more attractive breeding situation for this species. The possibility also 
exists that ibis have nested on Four Brothers since 1997 and were simply 
overlooked among all of the cormorants, herons, egrets, night-herons, 
waterfowl, and gulls. 
There is a certain irony in knowing that in the same year that Glossy 
Ibis was added as the eighth species on these New York islands in pio¬ 
neer or successional vegetation largely a result of cormorant vent activi¬ 
ty, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife obtained a USF&WS 
permit for cormorant control, solely "for the purpose of enhancing and 
maintaining avian and plant diversity on State-owned islands in Lake 
Champlain" (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service 1999). 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
Our thanks to The Nature Conservancy for their long-term coopera¬ 
tion and to our friends at the Adirondack Nature Conservancy for con¬ 
tinued counsel and support. Thanks, too, to the dozen High Peaks 
Audubon Wardens and more than 150 volunteers who have worked on 
the Four Brothers over the past 18 years. With a diversity of eight species 
of colonial waterbirds now in our care, three of which arrived under 
Audubon and Nature Conservancy stewardship, we must be doing 
something right. 
The Kingbird 2000 March; 50(1) 
15 
