Life Histories of North American Diving Birds
Dover Publications, Inc., 1963. Trade Paperback. Item #268545
ISBN: 048621091X
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ...and tame; they did not seem to be greatly disturbed or alarmed by our rock moving operations; we usually found the female, and occasionally the male, sitting quietly on its single egg, serenely looking at us with its big white eyes. The curious up-turned red bill and the white under parts were easily recognized even in the dark recesses of its nesting caverns. There was only a single egg in each case, which was lying cm the bare rock or soil or on a bed of loose pebbles; no nesting material had been brought in. The paroquet auklet breeds abundantly on the high rocky islands of northern Bering Sea and into Bering Strait. On the precipitous cliffs of St. Matthew Island, 200 feet or more above the sea, we saw a few pairs apparently breeding among the fulmars and puffin;, but their eggs were beyond our reach in the inaccessible crevices in the rocks. They were so tame and unsuspicious that I took a snapshot at one as it sat on a lofty pinnacle of rock within a few feet of me, watching the cloud of fulmars sailing below. Eggs.--The single egg is practically ovate in shape, with a slight tendency toward elliptical ovate in some specimens. The shell is finely granulated, almost rough and without any luster. The color is usually dull white or bluish white, but some eggs are decidedly bluish, about the color of heron's eggs, but darker than the palest of these. The measurements of 33 eggs, in various collections average 54.3 by 37.3 millimeters: the eggs showing the four extremes measure 58 by 33.5, 57.5 by 40, 51.5 by 37, and 52.5 by 33 millimeters. Plumages.--The downy young, when first hatched, is fuscous black on the crown, fuscous, Benzo brown, or hair brown on the back, sides, throat, and breast, and pale drab gray on the belly....
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