All the islands are frequented by birds; but the largest, the South Farallon, on which the light-house stands, is the favorite resort of these creatures, who come here in astonishing numbers every summer to breed; and it is to this island that the eggers resort at that season to obtain supplies of sea-birds’ eggs for the San Francisco market, where they have a regular and large sale.

The birds which breed upon the Farallones are gulls, murres, shags, and sea-parrots, the last a kind of penguin.  The eggs of the shags and parrots are not used, but the eggers destroy them to make more room for the other birds.  The gull begins to lay about the middle of May, and usually ten days before the murre.  The gull makes a rude nest of brush and sea-weed upon the rocks; the murre does not take even this much trouble, but lays its eggs in any convenient place on the bare rocks.

[Illustration:  THE GULL’S NEST.]

The gull is soon through, but the murre continues to lay for about two months.  The egging season lasts, therefore, from the 10th or 20th of May until the last of July.  In this period the egg company which has for eighteen years worked this field gathered in 1872 seventeen thousand nine hundred and fifty-two dozen eggs, and in 1873 fifteen thousand two hundred and three dozen.  These brought last year in the market an average of twenty-six cents per dozen.  There has been, I was assured by the manager, no sensible decrease in the number of the birds or the eggs during twenty years.

From fifteen to twenty men are employed during the egging season in collecting and shipping the eggs.  They live on the island during that time in rude shanties near the usual landing-place.  The work is not amusing, for the birds seek out the least accessible places, and the men must follow, climbing often where a goat would almost hesitate.  But this is not the worst.  The gull sits on her nest, and resists the robber who comes for her eggs, and he must take care not to get bitten.  The murre remains until her enemy is close upon her; then she rises with a scream which often startles a thousand or two of birds, who whirl up into the air in a dense mass, scattering filth and guano over the eggers.

Nor is this all.  The gulls, whose season of breeding is soon past, are extravagantly fond of murre eggs; and these rapacious birds follow the egg-gatherers, hover over their heads, and no sooner is a murre’s nest uncovered than the bird swoops down, and the egger must be extremely quick, or the gull will snatch the prize from under his nose.  So greedy and eager are the gulls that they sometimes even wound the eggers, striking them with their beaks.  But if the gull gets an egg, he flies up with it, and, tossing it up, swallows what he can catch, letting the shell and half its contents fall in a shower upon the luckless and disappointed egger below.

[Illustration:  SHAGS, MURRES, AND SEA-GULLS.]