NONSUCH 



ornaments. The plumes are exceedingly tough and 

 rubbery, as they must be to resist the wear and tear 

 of constant attrition against the narrow ledges and 

 rocky tunnels. 



The yellow-billed tropicbird is virtually the only 

 seabird that nests in Bermuda, a fact wholly un- 

 reasonable to our human minds. For here are hosts 

 of perfect nesting places on isolated islets and un- 

 climbable cHff s ; here is food — crabs, fish, squid — 

 in abundance, and most important in these later 

 days of evolution, here are iron-clad man-made laws 

 to protect them. Yet gulls and terns, gannets and 

 petrels hesitate or alight only to recover from stress 

 of storms, and then go their way to Greenland or 

 to Patagonia, according to the season's urge. 



The tropicbirds call cousins such diverse beings 

 as pelicans, snakebirds, cormorants and man-o'-war 

 birds, and their voice is as unhke these as their 

 bodies. The chronic syrinx abortion of the adult 

 pelican leaves him only a sibilant hiss of air passing 

 over untuned chords; the cormorants grunt and 

 croak like giant frogs, the man-o'-war has a court- 

 ship cadenza, liquid as a song-bird's, but the trio 

 of passing tropicbirds sends down to me only a 

 harsh, metallic tinki tink! recalling the flock notes 

 of cross-bills coming over a snowfield, or tree-frogs 

 tinkling in the dusk of a tropical jungle. 



Longtail is the Bermudian name for these black- 

 and-white birds. They seem to change color as 

 rapidly as the squid upon which they feed, for when 

 they fly over our white-washed laboratory roof their 



150 



