Part 11

On a second visit to the island a bit of old sail was brought, which I drew over me when lying on the ground—a plan resulting in my practical disappearance, as far as the Terns were concerned.

Obviously the only manner in which photographs of the Terns on their nests could be secured was to conceal one’s camera near the nest and retire, with a tube or thread, to a distance of a hundred feet or more. A nest was therefore selected about halfway up the bank on the westerly side of the island, the camera staked to the ground with long iron pins, and completely covered with the dried seaweed abundant on the beach below. I then attached a black linen thread to the shutter and retired about one hundred feet to the top of the bank. Almost as soon as I lay down the tumult overhead ceased, the birds scattered, and the rasping te-a-r-r-r note of alarm was replaced by a variety of calls, showing these birds to be possessed of an unexpectedly extended vocabulary. One call was a chirp not unlike the White-throated Sparrow’s, a second might be written tue, tue, tue, and was uttered when one bird was in pursuit of another.

The seaweed not only concealed the camera perfectly, but was so abundant near the bird’s nest that the appearance of a fresh mound apparently did not even excite the bird’s curiosity, and within twenty minutes it had returned to its eggs. It happened, however, that the nature of the site chosen induced the bird to face the water, and as the camera was above, and consequently behind it, the view presented did not show it to advantage, but after several unsuccessful trials the attempt to secure a more flattering view was abandoned.^{59}

A bird was now chosen who was incubating two eggs placed in a depression in a little mound of seaweed on the beach. On this occasion the camera was placed on a driftwood box, weighted with stones, and completely covered with seaweed. These eggs were hatching, and the bird soon returned to them; but before it had come back, another bird in darting by had flown into the thread, springing the shutter, and making the picture^{60} of the nest and eggs here given quite as effectively as many a similarly inexperienced photographer could have done.

The day but one following—July 20th—these eggshells had disappeared, and the nest was occupied by two young birds with just enough strength to crawl toward the parent bird when it appeared with food.^{61} And when their appetites were appeased the parent bird took her place on the nest and brooded them with the care of an anxious hen.^{62}

A few yards from this new family were two young who could not have been over four days old, but who had left the nest for the shade of a piece of driftwood. Here they were fed by two birds—doubtless both parents—whom they seemed to recognize among the other Terns hovering above them. They were apparently fed on small fish, which the parent bird placed in their open mouths while standing just within reaching distance. None of the several pictures of these birds were wholly successful, but in all of them the old birds seem to be much more graceful in form than the parent of the newly hatched young in the seaweed.

A less experienced Tern had placed its nest of a few bits of seaweed among the pebbles, almost within reach of the waves. This bird was singularly restless, turning its head from side to side so constantly that its picture was secured only by pulling the long thread the moment after the bird moved.^{63, 64} Like all the birds photographed on the nest, it showed no alarm at the click of the shutter as the exposure was made. This surprised me not a little. The camera was usually about three feet from the bird, the exposure was necessarily rapid (¹⁄₂₅ second and stop 8), the snap of the old-style “Henry Clay,” used on the first day, or even of the less loud Iris diaphragm, could be plainly heard at a distance of several yards, and its failure to startle these nervous, easily frightened birds makes one suspect that their hearing is deficient.

The nests of the Terns that chose the upland for a home were often picturesquely surrounded by stunted sumach or blooming yarrow, but the birds here were far less easy to photograph because of the difficulty of thoroughly concealing one’s camera. The owner of an especially pleasing nesting site kept me beneath my bit of sail for somewhat over two hours, while she—if it was she—hung in the air just over her eggs, on which I momentarily expected to see her settle.^{65}

In the meantime the tide had arisen and floated my boat, which was carried by the wind across to Naushon, and I might have passed the night with the Terns, had not the Fish Commissioner’s launch taken me off in the afternoon.

It would not have been an unwelcome experience. There was an abundance of dry seaweed for a couch—a nest, I had almost said—and some cavernlike openings beneath the piles of great bowlders had a very snug and cozy look, which probably would have disappeared shortly after sunset.

Two days later I went to Penikese, and my dominant thought on recalling the experience is an intense desire to repeat it. Penikese, or at least its northern part, is an island of Terns. On the rocky beach, from which the sides of the bank lead to the rolling upland above, whichever way I looked was a Tern’s nest with its two, or, rarely, three eggs. Less frequently young Terns were seen, varying in age from those just emerging from the shell to others almost ready to fly, while overhead was a countless multitude of hovering, darting Terns, whose voices united in one continuous, grating te-a-r-r-r made the air tremble. There was an occasional vibrant cack from a Roseate, but not more than a dozen birds of this species were heard. Asked to estimate the number of birds present I should have said ten thousand, though I should not have been surprised to learn that there were twenty thousand. However, Mr. George H. Mackay, of Nantucket, who may be regarded as a Tern specialist, placed the number of Terns on Penikese, in 1896, at “six or seven thousand,” and with the assistance of Mr. R. H. Howe, Jr., counted 1,416 nests containing 2,055 eggs (Auk, xiv, 1897, p. 283).

A small flock of sheep shared this part of the island with the Terns, and their presence accounted for the short grass which made the upland resemble a closely cut lawn, and permitted one readily to see the Tern’s eggs when several yards distant. For the same reason the birds could be seen even more plainly, and my most pleasing memory of Penikese is the greensward dotted with the white forms of breeding birds, who had returned to their nests after I had partially concealed myself behind a bowlder.

In or near the nests many dead young birds were seen. The cause of their death was not evident, unless it may be attributed to the unguarded footsteps of the grazing sheep. If this be true, the parent birds seemed in no way to resent the sheep’s carelessness, but accepted their presence without protest; one bird even exhibited a sign of good fellowship by perching on a sheep’s back, and the length of time it remained there showed that it was by no means an unwelcome visitor.

My time on Penikese was too short to more than show what an admirable opportunity is here offered the ornithologist who desires to make a close study of the home life and social relations of Terns. The present owners of the island, the Messrs. Homer, of New Bedford, take a greatly to be commended interest in the welfare of their feathered tenants, and, through posters and the agency of their representative on the island, aim to afford the birds a much-needed protection.

What an enviable possession! What a privilege to be able to give a refuge to so large a proportion of the remaining survivors of these persecuted birds!

With no desire to underrate the services to the Commonwealth of these gentlemen, I still could wish the Terns more stable protectors. Not the State, whose record as a Tern protector does not invite our confidence, but a society of bird lovers—the Nuttall Club of Cambridge, or the Audubon Society of Massachusetts. Would it not be a fitting act for one of these organizations to ask from woman, the Tern’s chief enemy, contributions to a fund for the purchase of an asylum for her victims. Can no one so plead the Terns’ cause that many a feather-bedecked woman will be glad to send her conscience money to aid in securing their protection?

But in addition to being a home of the birds, Penikese has other claims upon Nature lovers. Here Agassiz, through the medium of his summer school, brought his pupils into direct contact with Nature, and the scene of his labors is fraught with associations to every one familiar with the inspiring history of his life. Let us keep this island sacred to his memory and the Terns.

THE BIRD ROCKS OF THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE

PERCÉ AND BONAVENTURE

The naturalist realizes with the utmost sadness that the encroachments of civilization are rapidly changing the conditions of animal life on this small sphere of ours, and that soon he may find Nature primeval only in its more remote or inaccessible parts.

Forest life vanishes with the demand for timber, which sends the axeman in advance of the agriculturist. The tillable plains, prairies, and bottom lands are transformed by the plow. The sandy beaches suffer with an eruption of summer hotels and cottages, and within the confines of civilization only such useless portions of the earth’s surface as the arid deserts and barren mountain tops, marshy wastes and rocky or far-distant islets, have been unaltered by man.

It is especially to the preserving influences of island life that we owe the continued survival of many animals which have greatly decreased or become exterminated on the mainland, as has been remarked of the Terns and Heath Hen—two illustrations among hundreds that might be given. Certain animals, therefore, are not only more abundant on islands, but, if their home be not shared by man, they exhibit a tameness surprising to one who has known only the timid, man-fearing creatures of the mainland.

On several uninhabited West Indian islets the sailors of Columbus killed Pigeons and other birds with sticks, or caught them in their hands. Darwin writes of the “extreme tameness” of the birds of the Galapagos, and tells of pushing a Hawk off its perch with the muzzle of his gun. Moseley, on Inaccessible and Kerguelen Islands, had similar experiences.

The Albatrosses of the Laysan Islands show far less fear of man than do barnyard fowls—in short, if it were necessary, hundreds of instances might be cited to show that distrust of man is an acquired and not a natural trait of animals.

Having these facts in mind, therefore, I bethought me of some island or islands which were neither at the antipodes nor either pole, and where birds were not only abundant, but in such happy ignorance of man that no difficulty would be experienced in securing their photographs. These would not only have a present interest and value, but would also form permanent records of conditions already threatened by the destructive tendencies of the age.

After carefully considering all the more easily reached islets of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, my choice fell on certain of the bird rocks of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The name bird rock is used in both a general and a special sense. In the former it may be applied to many of the rocky islets of the gulf, in the latter it relates exclusively to the Bird Rocks at the northeastern end of the Magdalen group.

Percé Rock, Bonaventure Island, the Magdalens, and the Bird Rocks themselves seemed to offer the best opportunities to the bird photographer, and, accompanied by my best assistant, I departed for the first named on July 2, 1898.

Percé Rock^{71} (so named because its base has been pierced by the action of the waves) lies about three hundred feet off the land at the town of Percé, on the west side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.