Birds That Hunt and Are Hunted

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TUBE-NOSED SWIMMERS Shearwaters Petrels TUBE-NOSED SWIMMERS Shearwaters and Petrels (Order Tubinares) The albatrosses, fulmars, shearwaters, and petrels, that comprise this order of water-birds, live far out on the ocean, touching land only to nest, and are unsurpassed in powers of flight, owing to the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TUBE-NOSED SWIMMERS Shearwaters Petrels TUBE-NOSED SWIMMERS Shearwaters and Petrels (Order Tubinares) The albatrosses, fulmars, shearwaters, and petrels, that comprise this order of water-birds, live far out on the ocean, touching land only to nest, and are unsurpassed in powers of flight, owing to the constant exercise of their long, strong, pointed wings. None of our American sportsmen can wail, with Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, that he shot the albatross, for the several species that comprise its family (Diomedeidcz) confine themselves to the southern hemisphere. The wandering albatross, the largest of all sea birds, with a wing expanse of from twelve to fourteen feet, and Mother Carey's chickens, the little petrels that travellers on the north Atlantic frequently see, represent the two extremes of size among the pelagic birds. The plumage of birds of this order is compact and oily, to resist water, and differs neither in the sexes, nor at different seasons, so far as is known. Sooty black, grays, and white predominate. The peculiarity of nostrils, tubular in form, and nearly always horizontal, divide the birds into a distinct order. Shearwaters and Petrels (Family Procellariidce) Mother Carey's Chickens may be distinguished by their small size, slight, elegant form, and graceful, airy, flickering flight, as contrasted with the strong, swift flying of the larger shearwaters that often sail with no visible motion of the pinions. Birds of the open sea, feeding on animal substances, particularly the fatty ones, they may sometimes be noticed in flocks, picking up the refuse thrown overboard from the ship's kitchen, on the ocean highway, like the more common herring gull. They seem to be ever on the wing, though their webbed feet indicate that they ...