T4o THE CONDOR I Von. V Though mainly habitants of fresh and brackish water, to some extent these birds also frequent sea islands. The most notable instance of this kind that has come to my attention is that of Watling's Island in the Bahamas. There. on July T g, g9o3, Mr. J. H. Riley of the National Museum found about fifty pairs breeding in the tall mangroves about a salt lagoon. The eggs were mostly hatched at that time and the young were in all stages of growth. Some of them, though not able to fly, had left the nests and were swimming about in the lagoon. The last of April, t9ox, while Mr. Goldman and I xvere cruising around the shore of Yucatan in a small boat we landed for a short time on Contoy Island near Cape Catoche. Here we found many of these c?rmorants perched in the mangroves bordering some small salt lagoons, in company with white ibises and man-o'-war birds. In the trees were some old cormorant nests, all of which were unoccupied. Last March we camped on a small river at the bottom of a deep canyon in central Michoacan; this stream runs a tortuous course between high rocky walls LAKE GHAPALA, JALISCO, MEXICO, SHOWING LARGE BOAT ROOFED WITH RUSHES and at short intervals breaks into foaming rapids. Our camp was on a narrow sandy flat at the water's edge, under the overhanging branches of some small nm- hogany and other trees that had secured a foothold in the talus at the [hot of a diff. As we lived here unsheltered except by the foliage, the happenings among the wild life of this solitary place were under constant observation. Among the inter- esting daily events was the passage up the river each morning of several Mexican cormorants, always flying singly, their glossy black plumage gleamlug in the in- tense sunlight as they turned. They were evidently on their way to some fishing ground higher up. and several hours later--usually about midday-?came back fol- lowing, as in the morning, all the wanderings of the river and giving a touch of completeness to the wild character of the surroundings. In the summer of x897 we found them in abundance about the lagoons and streams of the coast country in southern Sinaloa, and especially at some shallow rapids in the Rosario River a few miles above the town of Rosario. During the early part of the rainy season the river was low and at the place mentioned a short descent in the boulder strewn bed of the stream made a stretch, forty or fitly
