File:Bird-lore (1915) (14568770179).jpg

Identifier: birdlore17nati (find matches)
Title: Bird-lore
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals
Subjects: Birds -- Periodicals Birds -- Conservation Periodicals
Publisher: New York, National Association of Audubon Societies
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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Island, Alaska, which formed a continuous bed of black bodies sittingclosely together on the water over an area that averaged more than half amile in width and about ten miles in length. This observation was made latein the breeding season, and apparently all the birds were males. When risingfrom the water the noise from their wings was like the continuous roar of somegigantic cataract. The species must have been very numerous for these wereall males, and we must remember that females and young were doubtless infar greater numbers in the neighborhood. The summer home of the Surf Scoter is in the far North. None is known torear its young in the United States. Those occasionally found in our bordersin summer are either cripples, as the result of winter shooting, or are non-breeding individuals. They nest in suitable localities north of a line drawnthrough Labrador, northern Quebec, Great Slave Lake, and southern Alaska.Audubon, describing a nest which he found in Labrador, wrote: (476)
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^ -^ V) The Surf Scoter 477 For more than a week after we had anchored in the lovely harbour ofLittle Macatina, I had been anxiously searching for the nest of this species,but in vain; the millions that sped along the shores had no regard to my wishes.At length I found that a few pairs had remained in the neighborhood, and onemorning, while in the company of Captain Emery, searching for the nests ofthe Red-breasted Merganser, over a vast and treacherous fresh-water marsh, Isuddenly started a female Surf Duck from her treasure. We were then aboutfive miles distant from our harbour, from which our party had come in twoboats, and five and a half miles from the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.The marsh was about three miles in length, and so unsafe that more than oncewe both feared, as we were crossing it, that we might never reach its margin.The nest was snugly placed amid the tall leaves of a bunch of grass, and raisedfully four inches above its roots. It was entirely composed of wit

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