The California Mur re 
air, while the females remain huddled 
together, shifting uneasily upon their 
eggs, or backing away from the 
nearest ones, uttering apprehensive 
hows. All the birds in turn bow ex¬ 
travagantly, using only their heads 
and sinuous necks, and so frequently 
that a colony viewed from above 
looks something like a grain field 
under a breeze. 
If the intruder does not press 
his advantage too hotly, those that 
have retreated from their eggs make 
shuffling feints at return, aided oc¬ 
casionally by their wings. Those 
that have found their eggs bend low 
to inspect them, or use the bill to 
assist in thrusting them between 
their legs. Others pause now and 
then to yawn or to stretch the wings, 
beating them rapidly three or four 
times before refolding. This is when 
the birdman seats himself on the 
white-washed ledge, Turk-fashion, 
places the camera in his lap and 
begins to shuffle forward like a leg¬ 
less beggar, “snapping” momentarily. 
The strain of approaching danger 
begins to tell on the Murrine nerve; 
but when the last mother has fled, 
we have before us such a varied assortment of eggs that regret is lost in 
wonder. 
Murres’ eggs are the Majolica ware of every bird-egg collection. In 
ground-color varying from pure white and delicate grays to beryl-green or 
even sea-green, they are speckled, splattered, blotched, and daubed with 
browns and blacks of a hundred shades. The more lightly marked speci¬ 
mens may have nothing by way of ornamentation beyond faint vermicula- 
tions of pale oil-green and tawny olive, or else tiny irruptions of sordid 
lavender and Indian purple; but others may be scrawled like a blackbird’s 
egg with purplish blacks, or buried, like a hawk’s, in a smudge of chestnut- 
rufous. One specimen in the M. C. O. collection exhibits a five-rayed 
rosette of carob-brown on a whitish ground. Another bears a maze of 
Taken on Carroll Islet, off the coast of Washington 
EXPOSED LEDGES 
Photo by the Author 
1497 
