A. E. Verrill — The Bermuda Islands, 669 



The bird itself was variously described as of the size of a pigeon, 

 green plover, or sea mew ; its bill was hooked and strong, and it 

 could bite viciously; its back was 'russet brown' and there were 

 russet and white quillfeathers in its wings ; its belly was white. It 

 arrived in October and remained until the first of June. 



There is no known living bird that agrees with it in these several 

 characters. Most certainly it could not have been a shearwater, as 

 Hurdis and others have supposed, nor any known member of the 

 petrel family, all of which have such a disagreeable flavor that 

 neither their flesh nor eo-^s are used as food unless in cases of starva- 

 tion. 



The following graphic account of the bird and its habits was 

 written by Mr. W. Strachy, one of the party wrecked with Sir 

 George Somers in the 'Sea Venture,' July, 1609 : 



"A kinde of webbe-footed Fowle there is, of the bignesse of an 

 English greene Plover, or Sea-Meawe, which all the Summer we saw 

 not, and in the darkest nights of November and December (for in 

 the night they onely feed) they would come forth, but not flye farre 

 from home, and hovering in the ayre, and over the Sea, made a 

 strange hollow and harsh howling. They call it of the cry which it 

 maketh, a Cohow. Their colour is inclining to Russet, with white 

 bellies, as are likewise the long feathers of their wings, Russet and 

 White, these gather themselves together and breed in those Hands 

 which are high, and so farre alone into the Sea, that the Wilde 

 Hogges cannot swimme over them, and there in the ground they 

 have their Burrowes, like Conyes in a Warren, and so brought in the 

 loose Mould, though not so deepe ; which Birds with a light bough 

 in a darke night (as in our Lowbelling) wee caught, I have beene at 

 the taking of three hundred in an houre, and wee might have laden 

 our Boates. Our men found a prettie way to take them, which was 

 by standing on the Rockes or Sands by the Sea-side, and hollowing, 

 laughing, and making the strangest outcry that possibly they could ; 

 with the noyse whereof the Birds would come flocking to that place, 

 and settle upon the very amies and head of him that so cried, and 

 still creepe neerer and neerer, answering the noyse themselves ; by 

 which our men would weigh them with their hand, and which 

 weighed heaviest they took for the best and let the others alone, and 

 so our men would take twentie dozen in two houres of the chiefest 

 of them ; and they were a good and well relished Fowle, fat and full 

 as a Partridge. In January wee had great store of their Egges, 

 which are as great as an Hennes Egge, and so fashioned and white 



