The Grebes of Southern Oregon

Abstract

F 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 (,Sterna caspia) on the Lower Klamath, and two small colonies of Forster Terns (Sterna forsteri), one at the north end of Tule Lake and the other along Klamath River. The American Black Tern (Hydrochelidon nigra surinamensis) nested in the same colonies with the Forster Tern and were even more common. Formerly these velvet-plumaged birds were very common 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 (AJchmo5horus occidentalis) 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