Identifier: birdlore14nati (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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-sity of Iowa, represented by Prof. C. C. Nutting, head of the zoological depart-ment, whereby an expedition was sent to Laysan, the largest and most impor-tant island of the group; to ascertain the present condition of the bird rookeriesand to collect a series of birds for a museum exhibit. This expedition, headed by Prof. Homer R. Dill, reached Laysan,April 24, 1911, and remained until June 5. Professor Dill writes: Our first impression of Laysan was that the poachers had stripped the ♦Report of an Expedition to Laysan Islands in 1911, under the joint auspices of the United StatesDepartment of Agriculture and the University of Iowa. By Homer R. Dill, Assistant Professor ofZoology in the State University of Iowa, and Wm. Alanson Bryan, Professor of Zoology in the Collegeof Hawaii. Bull. No. 42, Biological Survey, U. S. Dept. of .\griculture, Washington, 1912, pp. 1-30;pUs. IX. tSee U. S. I-ish Com. Bull, for 1903. pp. 1-39; The .\uk, XX, 1903. PP- 384-397; XXI, 1904, pp.8-20. (279)
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Report of an Expedition to Laysan Islands in 1911 281 place of bird lift. An area of ()\tr ihrcc hundred acres on each side of thebuildings was apparently abandoned. Only the Shearwaters moaning in theirburrows, the little wingless Rail skulking from one grass tussock to another,and the saucy Finch remained. It is an excellent example of what ProfessorNutting calls the survival of the inconspicuous. Here, on every side, are bones bleaching in the sun, showing where thepoachers have piled the bodies of the birds as they stripped them of wings andfeathers. In the old open guano shed (p. 283) were seen the remains of hundredsand possibly thousands of wings which were placed there but never cured forshipping, as the marauders were interrupted in their work. An old cistern back of one of the buildings tells a story of cruelty thatsurpasses anything else done by these heartless, sanguinary pirates, not except-ing the practice of cutting the wings from living birds and leaving them todie of

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