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Updated: June 12, 2025
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 sea abounds with a variety of fish, so that without going out of the cove where we lay, we caught every day, with the seine and hooks and lines, a quantity sufficient to serve the whole ship's company: And along the shore we found plenty of shags, and a few other species of wild-fowl, which those who have long lived upon salt provisions will not think despicable food.
They take certain spots to themselves, and build their nests near the edge of the cliffs on little hillocks, which are either those of the sword-grass, or else they are made by the shags building on them from year to year. There is another sort rather smaller than these, which breed in the cliffs of rocks.
When I visited some of the breeding-places of the Shags on the 27th of May, 1878, neither Gulls nor Shags had hatched, but when I went to the Gull Cliff on the 20th of June I found nearly all the Shags had hatched, though none or very few of the Herring Gulls had done so; some of the young Shags had left the nests and were about on the water; others were nearly ready to leave, and several were little things quite in the down.
The Crow is pretty common, and breeds in most of the Islands, and probably at times commits considerable depredations amongst the eggs and young of the Gulls and Shags at all events it is by no means a welcome visitor to the breeding stations of the Gulls, as in this summer I saw four Crows about a small gullery near Petit Bo Bay, one of which flew over the side of the cliff to have a look at the Gulls' eggs, probably with ulterior intentions in regard to the eggs; but one of the Gulls saw him, and immediately flew at him and knocked him over: what the end of the fight was I could not tell, but probably the Crow got the worst of it, as several other Gulls went off to join their companion as soon as they heard the row; and the Crows trespassed no more on the domain of the Gulls at least whilst I was there, which was some time.
And they saw lakes beautiful on all sides with aquatic birds, and covered all around with kumudas, and pundarikas, and kokanadas, and utpalas, and kalharas, and kamalas and thronged on all sides with drakes and ruddy geese, and ospreys, and gulls and karandavas, and plavas, and swans, and cranes, and shags, and other aquatic birds.
He was very tall and slim and wore a gay uniform and a fierce mustache. Yet the mustache was the only fierce thing about Omby Amby, whose nature was as gentle as that of a child. The wonderful Wizard had asked to join the party, and with him came his friend the Shaggy Man, who was shaggy but not ragged, being dressed in fine silks with satin shags and bobtails.
There are, however, some oceanic or aquatic birds which point out the vicinity of land; especially shags, which seldom go out of sight of it; and gannets, boobies, and men-of-war birds, I believe, seldom go very far out to sea.
Birds were everywhere about the lagoons ducks, shags, great geese, and pigmy geese, hovering and settling about them in screaming clouds; and after dinner, deciding we might as well have a bit of game for supper, we walked across the open salt-bush plain to the Big Red Lily.
Here great flocks of grey snipe continually assemble, together with kingfishers, shags, wild duck, teal, and other waterfowl. The high bank conceals all behind it; but in one or two places we catch a glimpse of some settler's house, cresting the bold bluff, or half hiding in its orchards.
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