Identifier: birdlore211919nati (find matches)
Title: Bird lore
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: National Committee of the Audubon Societies of America National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals National Audubon Society
Subjects: Birds Birds Ornithology
Publisher: New York City : Macmillan Co.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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inexplicable problem in distribution. During the succeeding two daysfew birds were observed. An occasional Shearwater or Petrel (^Estrelata?)was seen scaling over the waves in its unending and apparently fruitless searchfor food, but we were evidently not sailing over good feeding grounds. At9 A.M. on the 16th we passed about ten miles to the east of Malpelo Islet, arocky pile which loomed to surprising height above the horizon. Doubtless itis the home of many sea-birds, but, so far as I know, no naturalist has everlanded upon it. At 7 oclock on the morning of the i8th we were off Point Parina, the mostwestern part of South America, and near enough to the shore to see the oil-derricks, which indicate the product of this barren coast. At 10 a.m. we reachedPayta, our first port from Panama, and we were now fairly within the zonewhich distinguishes the Peruvian littoral as the home of countless hordes of sea-birds. There were Gulls, Cormorants, Boobies and Pelicans in amazing abun- (87)
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Notes from a Traveler in the Tropics 89 dance. There is doubtless no area of equal extent in the world with a largersea-bird population than the waters off this coast. Throughout its entirelength of some 1,200 miles, birds are always present in large numbers, and whensome unknown cause induces the small fish on which they feed to appear in acomparatively restricted area in incalculable myriads, there is a correspondingconcentration of the feathered forms which prey upon them. On November 20, when we were anchored off the port of Salaverry, it wasobvious that we were in the center of such a gathering. Whether one lookednorth, east, south or west, birds could be seen in countless numbers passingin endless files, fishing in dense, excited flocks or massed in dark islands onthe sea. If one looked toward the shore, where the bare, blazing sand-dunessmothered in smooth banks the base of coastal hills rising dark and desolatebehind them, to be in turn overtopped by the distant Andes, long, w

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