BRITAIN'S BIRDS AND THEIR NESTS. 23 



ORDER, TUBINARES (PETRELS, &c.); 

 Family, PROCELLARIID^ (Typical Petrels). 



THE STORM PETREL 



(Procellaria pelagica). 



Plate 8. 



' Birds of the open sea ! ' It is a title applied more or 

 less appropriately to several kinds of birds, but one which 

 conjm-es up to the imagination before all others the 

 Petrels, those birds which form the escort of ships in mid- 

 ocean when Gulls and other such sea-fowl have long dropped 

 astern. On all the oceans of the world some of them are 

 to be found, and they are chief among the few flying 

 birds that cross that expanse of encircling seas which 

 isolates the grim Antarctic continent from the rest of 

 the world. It is not only the thought of their months- 

 long absences from land that lends to these birds an air 

 of romance, nor is it only the superstitions of sailors re- 

 garding them, for they have an especial attraction and 

 fascination for the naturalist because of the way the secrets 

 of their lives have been kept from him. For in spite of 

 the discoveries of recent expeditions, we remain ignorant of 

 the very nesting-places of many species, themselves common 

 enough on the high-seas. And this for good reasons : the 

 wide distribution and the long joiirneys of these birds 

 make the field of exploration overwhelmingly great. The 

 nesting-places themselves may be a few unimportant islands, 

 or a portion of ice-locked Antarctica. But even if they 

 are in less out-of-the-way places, the fact that Petrels' 

 nests are usually in burrows or rock crevices, and may be 



