File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17973508100).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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398 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL was an important nursery of gulls, terns, ducks, and cormorants in summer, and a safe harbor for wild fowl during the spring and fall migrations. Huron and Siskiwit islands, lying in Lake Superior, and the homes of innumerable herring gulls, were made perpetual bird sanctu- aries, and an Audubon warden took up his lonely watch to guard them against all comers.
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INoddy terns, on the Bird Key reservation. Dry Tortiigas, Florida. The noddies build their nests of twigs, moss, and sea shells in the bay cedar bushes Away down at the mouth of Tampa Bay, Florida, is the ninety-acre island of Passage Key. Here the wild bird life of the Gulf Coast has swarmed in the mating season since the white man first knew the country. Thousands of herons of \-ari()Us species, as well as terns and shore birds, make this their home. The dainty little ground doves flutter in and out among the cactus on the shel- tered sides of the sand dunes; plovers and sandpipers chase one another along the beaches, and the burrowing owls hide in their holes by night and explore the island by day. When this place was described to President Roosevelt, he immediately de- clared that birds must not be killed here any longer without the consent of the Secretary of Agriculture. With one stroke of his pen, he l)rought this de- sired condition into existence, and Mrs. Asa Pilisbury was duly appointed to protect the island. She is one of the few" women bird wardens in America. These things happened in the early days of government work for the pro- tection of water birds. The Audubon Society had found a new field for en- deavor, which was highly prolific in re- sults. With all the limited means at its command, the work of ornithological exploration was carried forward. Every island, mud flat, and sand bar along the coast of the Mexican Gulf, from Texas to Key West, was visited by trained ornithologists, who reported their find- ings to the New York office. From here they were hurried to Washington for the approval of Dr. T. S. Palmer of the U. S. Biological Survey, and of Mr. Frank Bond, of the General Land Office, where the executive orders were prepared for the President's signature. The Breton Island reser^•ati()n off the coast of Louisiana, including scores of islands and bars, was established in 190-1. Six additional reservations were soon afterward createtl along the west coast of Florida, thus extending a per- petual guardiansliip o\er the colonies of sea and coastwise birds in that terri- tory, — the pitiful remnants of the vast rookeries whicli had ))een despoiled to add to the profits of the millinery trade. The work was early started in the

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