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Screaming gannets wheeled in clouds over their heads, and portly murres started up heavily from the frequent pools, into which they broke with flashing paddles, and laughter, such as they had never before indulged in since their first misadventure.
Allow genuine residents of the Canadian Labrador to take ducks' and gulls' eggs up to the 1st of June, and murres', auks' and puffins' eggs up to the 15th of June. Allow them to shoot after the 1st of September without a license. The conditions of the coast require these exceptions, which will not endanger the bird life there.
And so they were, in truth, for under their extended wings I saw little black feet moving. Those two mother murres were not going to forsake their babies! No, not even for these approaching monsters, such as they had never before seen, clambering over their rocks. What was different about these two? They had their young ones to protect.
Scrambling over this edge, we found ourselves in the midst of a great colony of nesting murres hundreds of them covering this steep rocky part of the top. As our heads appeared above the rim, many of the colony took wing and whirred over us out to sea, but most of them sat close, each bird upon its egg or over its chick, loath to leave, and so expose to us the hidden treasure.
So the toll of birds and mammals taken by the present genuine residents for necessary food is not a menace, if taken in reason. In isolated places in the Gulf, like Harrington, the Provincial law might safely be relaxed, so as to allow the eggs of ducks and gulls to be taken up to the 5th of June and those of murres, auks and puffins up to the 15th.
The birds which breed upon the Farallones are gulls, murres, shags, and sea-parrots, the last a kind of penguin. The eggs of the shags and parrots are not used, but the eggers destroy them to make more room for the other birds. The gull begins to lay about the middle of May, and usually ten days before the murre.
The top of the rock was somewhat cone-shaped, and in order to reach the peak and the colonies on the west side we had to make our way through this rookery of the murres.
"I know what they were! They were murre eggs. Murre eggs are different from any other kind. They've got more colors and marks on 'em. Partner found some last year." "There were some murres down on the water, but I never thought they'd go up to lay their eggs in places like that.
On the cliffs, during the summer months, the hand-net on a pole is a favorite device for capturing the murres, which fly back and forth among the rocks in immense numbers, making one continuous war night and day. These methods of hunting are all very old, yet all are still in use among the Inupash with the exception of that of netting foxes, the net having been abandoned for the steel trap.
I do not suppose this an extravagant estimate, for, taking the season of 1872, when seventeen thousand nine hundred and fifty-two dozen eggs were actually sold in San Francisco, and allowing half a dozen to each murre, this would give nearly thirty-six thousand birds; and adding the proper number for eggs broken, destroyed by gulls, and not gathered, the number of murres and gulls is probably over one hundred thousand.