DEPARTMENT OF ORNITHOLOGY 



CJif^,-,, I Arthur H. Norton, Portland 



rL.aUOrS ^ p^j Alfred O. Gross. Brui 



nswick 



OUR STORMY PETRELS. 

 By Arthur H. Norton. 



Leach's Petrel, more commonly known on our coast as the Carey 

 Chicken or corrupted to ''Kerry Chicken," was until a few years 

 after 1896, one of the most abundant seabirds to be found breeding 

 on the coast of Maine. Its metropolis with us was within that 

 archipelago between Pemaquid Point and the western extremity of 

 Frenchman's Bay. Small colonies were found, however, as far to 

 the southwestward as Casco Bay, from which it ranged eastward 

 and northward even to Greenland. 



Through the keeping of cats and dogs on these outer islands for 

 the past quarter century, today this great population of birds has 

 faded away, leaving us but a dangerously small remnant of a unique 

 and most interesting species. The Petrels are pre-eminently sea 

 birds, coming to land only for the purpose of nesting and raising 

 their young, spending the rest of their lives at sea far from land, 

 where their necessary activity during gales and storms won for them 

 the reputation of being sacred to Mother Carey, a sea witch whose 

 presence made visible by her feathered attendants was on such occa- 

 sions most unwelcome to the superstitious seamen of olden days. 

 The name Petrel is said to be derived from Petrellus (Latin for 

 Little Peter), from the habit of many of the species of running with 

 outspread wing's on the surface of the water. Hence from their con- 

 spicuous activity during storms, the name of stormy Petrel, first 

 applied in a generic sense to any of the small species, but later more 

 or less restricted in the English language to one species, which is 

 normally European in distribution. 



Leach's Petrel, so named for Wm. E. Leach, is the only species of 

 Petrel found breeding on the Atlantic coast of the United States. 

 It is about eight inches long, of a sooty brown tint with white rump, 

 and silvered tips and edges to the wing coverts ; the legs are short, 

 and the tail slightly forked. 



It passes the winter at sea from the latitude of Virginia, southward 

 to Brazil. In the spring the birds appear on the coast of Maine 

 early in May, and late in the month they come to land for the pur- 

 pose of breeding, visiting only the outermost islands off the coast. 

 In their landing they are strictly nocturnal, making their appearance 

 ashore only after twilight has deepened to dark night. The mated 

 birds take possession of some dark recess among the rocks of a 



