88 BULLETIN 121, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



While with us this shearwater is usually silent except when squab- 

 bling for food, but on its breeding grounds it is evidently quite noisy. 

 Sir Walter Buller (1888) says: "These birds are at all times more 

 nocturnal than diurnal, and when hovering overhead at night utter 

 a frequent call note, like tee-tee-tee^ from which the Maori name is 

 derived." -Mr. Walter H. Rich writes to me that when on Georges 

 Bank he " did not hear the nasal, squealing battle cry from a black 

 hag," and the only sound which he "could with certainty trace to 

 this species was a low, gutteral '■wok-woh-wok ' when much excited." 



Although usually to be found only far offshore, shearwaters are 

 occasionally driven in near the land in stormy weather, particularly 

 when gathering into flocks or migrating. Mr. Loomis (1900) says: 

 "During a dense fog on the morning of June 2, and again on the 

 morning of the 3d, many in going down the coast passed within a 

 few hundred yards of the Monterey Wharf, illustrating the deflect- 

 ing influence of low fogs upon movements." Only once have I known 

 them to come inside the harbor at Chatham, Massachusetts, which 

 the fishermen said they had never known them to do. On Septem- 

 ber 5, 1909, the weather was very thick and stormy outside, and 

 there was a strong flood tide, on which a large flock of shearwaters 

 had apparently drifted in over the bars. We were anchored, fish- 

 ing, near the entrance of the harbor as they drifted past us, sitting 

 on the water in a large scattered flock and facing the strong north- 

 east wind. I counted about 275 of them; there were about a dozen 

 of the Cory shearwaters, and all the rest were sooty shearwaters. 

 When disturbed by a passing boat they all rose and flew past us out 

 toward the bars, only to drift in again with the tide and repeat the 

 operation. 



Winter. — On their return to northern waters these shearwaters may 

 be looked for in May and they become very abundant at times during 

 the summer, but in order to find them one must look well offshore 

 as a rule. I have frequently seen them in large numbers about 10 

 miles out at sea, off Chatham, Massachusetts, near the elbow of Cape 

 Cod. Here w^e used to go out with the fishing fleet to the cod banks, 

 when the sea was smooth enough to allow them to navigate among 

 the dangerous sand bars that guarded the entrance to the harbor. 

 It seemed as if w^e were really at sea when the boat began to rise and 

 fall on the long ocean swell, gliding down into the valleys and over 

 the crests of mountainous seas; here the little Wilson petrels flitted 

 past us, pattering over the waves, and these real pelagic wanderers, 

 the shearwaters, were first seen gliding along close to the water on 

 long pointed rigid wings, like miniature albatrosses. There were 

 three species — the greater, the sooty, and the Cory shearwaters ; the 

 first species far outnumbered all the others and the last was much 

 the rarest of the three. The dark bodied and still darker winged 



