. The Wilson bulletin . n little islets are literally covered with birds,at least fifty thousand, according to our estimate. The criesof the young birds were plainly audible from the Alexan-dria, over five hundred yards off the islands, and the con-tinual going and coming of the long strings of adult birds,almost always flying so close to the water that it seemed theymust wet the tips of the primaries at every stroke, told plainlythe great quantities of fish needed to feed such great numbers. What better place than this, the largest breeding colony ofBrown Pelicans in the country, to study the
. The Wilson bulletin . n little islets are literally covered with birds,at least fifty thousand, according to our estimate. The criesof the young birds were plainly audible from the Alexan-dria, over five hundred yards off the islands, and the con-tinual going and coming of the long strings of adult birds,almost always flying so close to the water that it seemed theymust wet the tips of the primaries at every stroke, told plainlythe great quantities of fish needed to feed such great numbers. What better place than this, the largest breeding colony ofBrown Pelicans in the country, to study the fearful ravagesbeing made upon our dwindling food supply? Surely, if thefood fishes are being destroyed as rapidly as the fishermenwould have us believe, some evidence of it would be seen onthese islands, where the young must be fed almost hourly. Buttry as we might, and we really wanted to find a few gamefish that our data would not resemble a stacked deck, wewere not able to find a single fish that man would eat. The. BROWN PELICANS The Brown Pelican 67 entire diet of the pelican seems to be of menhaden, a smallbony sardine, that is used as fertilizer in the east. If the fishis of no more use to man than that, we surely could not be-grudge this fine bird the few that he needs to satisfy hisdaily wants. We took the youngsters and made them disgorge into ourbuckets, and we collected sundry specimens that were depos-ited on our shores as we trod among the fuzzy little fellows,but our data was always the same, just menhaden. And al-though we traveled clear to the Texas coast, stopping at alllikely places, the answer was always the same. We preservedthe stomachs of the birds in formaldehyde, and sent them onto Washington, while the skins were saved for the large Hab-itat Group being prepared for the State Museum. The pelican is an easy-going, unsuspicious sort of fellow,and they paid no attention tO my little blind, but came circlingin and alighted before I had scarcely concealed
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1894
