116 BULLETIN 121, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



of personal experience, for at that time the bird was probably extinct or very 

 nearly so. 



The time of laying its eggs is a very remarkable point, in ^yhicll it differed 

 from all other birds of northern latitudes. The early contemporary writers 

 all agree that it laid its egg " in December or January " or "' in the coldest and 

 darkest months of the year." Tlie Fhearwaters, even in the West Indies, lay 

 their eggs in spring— March and April — and their eggs are so musky that tliey 

 are not edible; certainly no one would compare them to a hen's egg. Their 

 flesh also has so strong a flavor of bad fish oil and musk that no one would eat 

 it unless on the verge of starvation, though the newly hatched young are 

 sometimes eaten by sailors for lack of anything better. 



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 wei-e russet and white quill feathers 

 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 eggs are used as food unless 

 in cases of starvation. 



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 Sen 

 Venture, July, 1609 : 



" A kind of webbe-footed Fowle there is, of the bigness 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 maketJi, 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 lands 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 

 Eockes 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 armes and head 

 of him that so cried, and still creepe neerer and neei-er, 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 hours of tlie 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 shelled and have no difference in yolke nor white 

 from an Hennes Egge. There are thousands of these Birds, and two or three 

 Islands full of their Burrows, whether at any time (in two houres warning) 

 we could send our Cockboat and bring home as many as would serve the whole 

 Company: which Birds for their Blindnesse (for they see weakly in the day) 

 and for their cry and whooting, wee called the Sea Owle; they will bite cruelly 

 Avith their crooked Bills." 



