Page:Condor13(6).djvu/8

176 THE CONDOR Vol. XIII A reliable estimate is difficult to make, but I doubt if over 20,000 Murres now haul out on the southeast Farallon and its outliers. While reviewing a ledge one day in company with Mr. J. Rowley, I noticed a bird which 'apparently had its back to us while all the others were facing. Closer examination showed that it too was facing us. Its underparts were the same color that a Murre's back should be, sooty black. A_ lucky shot secured it, and it proved to be a male bird with breeding organs in active condition, a melanistic specimen without a trace of white in its plumage. 6. Larus 0ccidentalis. Western Gull. These birds afforded the dominant note of life on the West End, the fashionable residence quarter of the Farallones. They nested anywhere from beach to pinnacle, and a careful examination of near a thousand nests discovered a singular uniformity of type in coloring of the eggs. This is evidently a closely inbred colony, free for ages from admixture or disturbing influences. I have-seen a four times greater variation in a small colony of not forty pairs on a rock off the coast of Washington, debatable ground between occdenta/is and g/aucescens. While most nests contained three eggs, three clutches of four were found, the eggs being in each instance unquestionably the product of a single bird. In several instances I detected cannibalism, if such a harsh term can be ap- plied to a habit of sampling eggs of the same ?p_ecies. In each case the offender appeared to have leisure for the enjoyment of the unlawful feast, but it is an open question whether-they were cases of piracy or worse. Certainly the gulls are very jealous of each other, and the shifting readjustment which accompanies the pro- gress of the bird-man is always attended with many sharp passages-at-arms among the gulls. Conscience plays a proper part and the jealous owner always wins. Possibly three thousand pairs nested this season. 7. Larus heermanni. Heermann Gull. Only one individual twice seen. The second time he was found in company with Western Gulks, a member of a Murre-marauding company. 8. 0cean0dr0ma kaedingi. Kaeding Petrel. Our tents were finally pitched under the lee of Tower Hill on the south side, and within hailing distance of the Government Wireless Station. Near us were several half-ruined stone walls, the relics of ,ccupation by the eggers, or possibly by their predecessors, the Russian sea-otter hunters. These walls resounded nightly to the incessant cries of Petrels as did every other wall on the island. On the evening of May 30, Leon Garland one of the wireless operators, secured a white-rumped petrel in his tent, whither it had been attracted by the light. On the morning of the 3rd of June, Mr. Garland brought in another Kaeding Petrel, which he had secured in one of these old stone walls near his tent, and he declared that the bird had been found sitting on an egg, although the latter was broken. Mr. Rowley joined forces with him and spent the best part of the day tearing down the walls of this and neighboring enclosures. Three more specimens were found along with considerable numbers of homochroa, which occupied the same area; and two eggs of ?ach species, the first of the season, rewarded the search. Although precisely similar conditions obtain elsewhere, no other Kaeding Petrels were encountered on the Farallones 9. 0cean0dr0ma h0m0chr0a. Coues Petrel. Either this species has notably in- creased of late, or else earlier visitors were inclined to underestimate its numbers. We found them well distributed throughout the main island. Not only are all the stone walls alive with them, but they occupy the minor rock-slides along with the Cassin Auklet, and they even burrow in the level ground in front of the keepers' houses. In investigating the drift area on Franconia beach, we found almost