Evening Star Newspaper, May 26, 1929, Page 109

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MAY 26, 1920.—PART 7. ' i\Taturalists Find a Male Discovery, on America’s Highest Mountain, of the First Nest of the Rare Surf Bird Which Has Been Eluding the Scientists for 140 Years. Father Surf Bird turns the eggs. BY MARJORIE MACDILL. QW that the feathered world is hard at work grappling with the high cost of worms and the knotty problems of fam- ily raising and housekeeping generally, the heyday of the naturalist’s hunting season is in full swing. With every one from Mr. and Mrs. Great Blue Heron to Father and Mother Chipping THIRTIR T I bird, he found that meekly sitting on the eggs doing lion's share of the incubating while friend wife spent her days in idle gossip with her emancipated female friends. This rare bird is believed to have been first described by a member of one of Capt. Cook's famous expeditions in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1789, the year of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. Ever since that time, hunting for a surf bird’s nest has been a favorite occupation of several generations of naturalists. As the name implies, they are shore birds, usually seen searching for food far out on the reefs where the long Pacific swells break over the rocks into fine spray. Twice a year, in the annual migration, these little creatures traverse the Pacific Coast line of two continents from the southern tip of South America to the northwestern corner of North America. In 1856 somebody took a specimen near San Francisco which was duly recorded in an ornithological collection, and about 1880 Dr. E. W. Nelson, chief of the United States Bio- logical Survey, contributed more fragments to the story of the elusive bird by noting its occurrence in Alaska while making a scientific exploration of that then little known land. Subsequent explorers from time to time re- ported seeing the bird in the same territory and brought back tales from the Indians that “they nested back in the mountains in mosquito time.” All this, slight though it was, gave weight to the idea that tlie breeding grounds were in Alaska. ntus another member of the Biological Survey, studying Alaskan caribou herds, clinched the argument by the discovery of a young bird under a week old, well up above the timber line on McKinley Creek. It logically followed that the nest couldn't be very far away. By this time the fleld had narrowed dowm by the process of elimination, since other ine yestigators in Northern Canada and other parts of Alaska had failed to find any trace of the bird’s nest. When Dr. Dixon first became active in the quest, he decided to profit by the experience of the other naturalists that had crossed the surf bird trail, and not look for it along the shore where one would naturally expect to find the nest of a sea-going bird. Plecing together the information about the few places where it had been seen and the many where it hadn’t, he made up his mind to concentrate his attack on the high interior bled over the rocky cliffs from the snow melting overhead. It was evident that a striking change, unusual in birds, came about in the habits of the surf birds as they moved from their Winter to Summer range. . the end of the northward migration abandon the seacoast and take up resi- from 300 to 500 miles from salt water. involves,” Dr. Dixon points out, “a t altitudinal shift. Instead of living as do at other seasons, during are to be found on rocky, below 4,000 feet elevation. With this marked change in habitat has ponding great change in food and . In Summer, instead of living on surf bird turns to an insect diet, living then almost ehtirely on active insects it captures by stealth or by fair chase in the open.” Yet, in spite of this, the character of their surroundings remains very much the same. Apparently they must have their rocks, no matter what the change in altitude or bill of fare. Their favorite haunts, Dr. Dixon found, were on the rock slides of the mountain where perching places on broken points of rock were much the same as the reefs they inhabit in Winter, ‘This is the same sort of range, strangely enough, preferred by the Alaskan mountain sheep, and it proved useless, in fact, to look for them outside of sheep country. Late one afternoon, toward the end@f May, the attention of Dr. Dixon’s companion, Mr, Wright, was attracted by an inconspicuous bird, sneaking away hurriedly over the stony ground. He watched with his binoculars and marked the spot where it disappeared. He set out to investigate, but had about given up the job as useless when he almost stepped on a bird which flew up wildly, straight in his face. It was later observed that whenever a moun- tain sheep gets too near a surf bird’s nesting ground the creature flies up and “explodes” in the startled animal's face. As the bird flew away Mr. Wright identified it unmistakably as a surf bird. Glancing at his feet he saw that he was about to put his foot on one of the prize goals of American naturalists for the last 140 years. There, rest- ing in a little hollow in th2 ground and within a foot of a well worn high road of the moun- tain sheep, were a few scraps of lichens and moss surrounding four eggs. The nest of the surf bird had been found at last. The expedi- tion was successful. The two men joyously gathered together notebooks, binoculars and cameras—both still and movie—and prepared to camp behind a pile of rocks within close range of their find. Only a few photos could be taken in the fast fading light. Shortly after the long arctic twilight set in a cold rain began to fall, but the surf bird Bird Hatching the Eggs merely fluffed up its feathers and the water not so well protected, but they held their pos$. ran down off its well oiled waterproof inta till well on into the next day. What they the absorbent moss around the nest. found out there about the domestic vagaries off The.shivering but enthusiastic observers were Continued on Twentieth Page. p For Impaired Vision —Consull.an Eye P hySiCian We commend The Star upon the selection of type used in this new feature. It can be read without over= taxing the eyes. == O PTICIAN— 918 Fifteenth Street WASHINGTON = e _Established 1899 At the LOWEST Price Ever Before Offered None Sold to Dealers Because we want more people to know about Kay’s liberal Charge Plan, we offer these genuine Eastman Kodaks at a saving mnever before equaled! 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