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 THE. CO.IB.R to;s 0x- Volume IX July-August 1OO7 Number THE GREBES OF SOUTHERN OREGON By WILLIAM L. FINLEY WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY HERMAN T. BOHLMAN OR years the lake region of southern Oregon was the most profitable field in the west for the plume hunter. Up to the summer of 1903 many, many thousands of grebes and terns were slaughtered thru this region to supply the millinery market. Scores of professional hunters shot these birds and shipped out bales of the skins till now there are comparatively few of these birds left about Lower Klamath and Tule Lakes. This traffic in bird skins has been checked, but it has never been stopped. After spending almost two months cruising these lakes during the summer of 1905, we found but one colony of Caspian Terns (%'terna caspia) on the Lower Klamath, and two small colonies of Forster Terns (,$7erna forsler/), one at the north end of Tule Lake and the other along Klamath River. The American Black Tern (Z]ydrochelidon nigra surinamensis)nested in the same colonies with the Forster Tern and were even more comnon. Formerly these velvet-plumaged birds were very conmon thruout this lake region. A peculiar habit of the terns would soon have led to their extinction. As soon as a hunter winged one of them and it fell fluttering to the water, instead of the other terns flying away, they hovered about excited and inquisitive and were shot as fast as the hunter could re-load. The wings and tail were all that the hunters used from the body of the tern and these netted about forty cents a bird. The Western Grebe (/2?chmophorus occtetla[s) was the greatest sufferer at the hands of the market hunter. This diver, of the glistening-white breast and the silvery-gray back was sought not without reason. The grebe hunters call the skin of this bird fur rather than feathers, because it is so tough it can be scraped and handled like a hide, and because of the thick warm plumage that seems much