Nov., I9O 5 I ?6? Among the Sea Birds off the Oregon Coast, Part II BY WILLIAM LOVELL FINLEY HE novelty of the situation had a great deal to do with alleviating the harg- ships and the difficulties we had to encounter in living five days among the sea birds on the vertical side of that rock isle. We had brought two ten- gallon casks of fresh water with us. We reasoned thus: if we were sea-bound on the rock by storm and had enough water to drink, we would not starve to death. According to the species of birds on the island, we made six different kinds of omelet. When the eggs were all hatched, if necessity compelled, we could dine on sea gull checks, even if they were not spiced up in good marketable chicken- tamale form. The ledges were slippery and the rocks crumbly in ?nany places. We could not climb along the shelves an hou'r without risking our lives in a dozen places. While camped on the rock, we wore rubber-soled shoes so we could hang and cling to the surface with some degree of safety. But even with these, as we hung to the ledges, we often found our toe-nails instinctively trying to drive through the soles of our shoes to get a better hold. We started with a new pair, but after four days of jumping and climbing on the sharp corners of the granite, we didn't have enough shoe left to tie on our feet, so we had to substitute burlap. If it is the longing for adventure in the Anglo-Saxon veins you want to sat- isfy, you get it here on the rocks; if the love for Nature, you find her as she is. There's not much poetry on the island. The adoratio? of many of the nature lovers, who fall into ecstacies over the sweet singing of the birds and the lovely perfume of the June flowers, would receive an awfnl blow on the solar-plexus the minute they got into the midst of an ear-splitting, screaming, murre rookery, or got the faintest sniff of the atmosphere. Up and down the ridge of the rock is the great colony of Brandt cormorants, the only "shag" found on the outer rock. Their nests are scattered only a fexv feet apart for over a hundred yards. I counted over 4oo nests in this one colony. They were built up in funeral pyre fashion, a foot or more above the surface, by the debris of successive generations--grass and sea-weeds, fish-bones and the dis- gorged remains of past banquets. In every nest were four or five eggs of a skim- nfilk, bluish tint, over which it looked as if some amateur white-washer had smeared a chalky surface. When a young cormorant is hatched, he looks as if some one had covered him with a black, greasy kid glove. The little beasts are not very pleasant to look at when you see them just coming out of the shell, but the gulls think these young- sters are the most palatable thing on the island. A nestful of them never lasts more than a few seconds if they are left unguarded. When I first looked at the motley crowds of hali-groxw? cormorants, that sat about in groups on the top of the rock, I tlmught Nature had stirely done her best to lnake something ugly and ridiculous. They stand around with their mandibles- parted and pant like a lot of dogs after the chase ?m a h(?t day. The throat is limp and flabby and hangs like an empty sack, shaken at every breath. Their bodies are propped up with a pair of legs that have a spread of webbed toes as large as a medium pan-cake. The youngsters have no very clear notion of xvhat feet are for, at least on land, and when you go near, they go hobhling off like a boy in a sack a Photographs illustrating this article are protected by copyright and must not be reproduced without per-
