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group in the early summer of 1604, he found quantities of nesting seabirds which he called tangeaux and which his men killed with sticks. Some ornithologists contend that “tangeaux” means gannets, but on the very next page of his own account, Champlain describes what is undoubtedly a gannet colony on a high island now called Gannet Rock, eleven miles north of the Tuskets, and identifies the bird as margos (margeaux), which is the French name for gannet. Noddy Island and Devil’s Limb, south of the Tuskets, may also have been home to spearbill colonies, along with Machias Seal Island and at least some of the islands in the Grand Manan assemblage.
    Farther south, along the coast of the Gulf of Maine, early accounts testify to the one-time presence of spearbills in considerable numbers. Some modern authorities insist these reports must all refer to migratory birds that bred at some far northern rookery such as Funk Island. The fact that many were seen and killed during the breeding season is explained on the supposition that these were immature or non-breeding birds.
    However, in 1603, Captain George Weymouth landed on a small island in the mouth of Maine’s Muscongus Bay and was much impressed to find “very great egg shells, bigger than goose eggs.” It is certainly within the realm of probability that these were the shells of spearbill eggs (amongst the largest eggs laid by any North American bird), which had been collected by Indians at rookeries on Monhegan or Manana Island some ten miles offshore, in the manner of the Newfoundland Beothuks at Funk Island.
    David Ingram, an English sailor who was marooned on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in 1568 and walked north to Nova Scotia, described a bird of “the shape and bigness of a goose, but their wings are covered with small, callow feathers and cannot fly: You may drive them like sheep.” Which is a good description of spearbills and their behaviour at a rookery. Josselyn, visiting New England circa 1670, described “the Wobble, an ill-shaped fowl having no long Feathers in their Pinions, which is the reason they cannot fly.” The spearbill was the only flightless bird Josselyn could have encountered and, since “Wobble” seems an apt description of the way it must have walked on land, and spearbills never came to land except to breed, I accept this as a strong indication of colonies on the New England coast. Audubon remembered an old hunter from the Boston area who told him that great auks were still present about Nahant and other islands when he was young.
    The finding of spearbill bones in Indian middens along the New England coast, and even as far south as Florida, establishes the fact that they were once found far to the south of the range currently ascribed to them by many biologists.
    The importance of seabird rookeries to transatlantic seamen was enormous. These men were expected to survive and work like dogs on a diet consisting principally of salt meat and hard bread. The meat was mainly lean and stringy beef or horse, and the bread was a biscuit baked to the consistency of concrete and usually shot through with weevils. Even these almost inedible staples were frequently in short supply due to the miserliness of ship-owners who seemed to believe that “wind and water” were enough to feed a sailor. Indeed, it was usual to supply the ships with only enough salt meat for the outward voyage, leaving the hard-driven, half-starved men to forage for themselves upon arrival. Apart from fish (most kinds of which if eaten as a steady diet in cold latitudes can result in chronic malnutrition because of a low fat content), the most convenient single source of food in season was what could be had from the bird rookeries.
    Initially, seabirds of a dozen or more species crowded the offshore islands and islets. Most were good fliers who could, and often did, nest on ledges and cliff faces where they were difficult to