Chap, vii.] SHEATH-BILLS. 1 55 



young downy birds. If one of these latter was driven in 

 amongst the brooders it was at once pecked ahiiost to death. 



The young ones utter a curious whistling cry, of a high pitch 

 and running through several notes, quite different from the 

 simple bass note of the adults. 



The rookery was only inhabited in about a quarter of its 

 extent, but it was strewed everywhere with the bones of the 

 penguins in heaps, and on the verge of the rookery was a 

 small ruined hut, with the roof tumbled in, and overgrown 

 with weeds, and containing an old iron pot, several old casks, 

 and some hoop iron ; evidently an old sealer's hut. The 

 sealers had probably employed their spare time in making 

 penguin oil, and taking perhaps skins, which are made up into 

 rugs and mats at the Cape of Good Hope, often only the 

 yellow streaked part about the neck being used. Hence the 

 many bones and emptiness of the rookery. The egg of the 

 King Penguin is more than ordinarily pointed at the small 

 end. It is a greenish-white, like other penguin eggs. 



Living also about the rookery was a flock of about thirty 

 Sheath-bills {Chioiiis viijior). The instant they saw us ap- 

 proaching they came running in a body over the floor of the 

 rookery in the utmost excitement of curiosity, and came right 

 up within reach of our sticks, uttering a " Cluck, cluck," which 

 with them is a sort of half-inquisitive, half-defiant note. We 

 knocked over several with big stones and our sticks ; but the 

 remainder did not in the least become alarmed. They just 

 fluttered up off the ground to avoid a stone as it was sent 

 dashing through the thick of them ; but immediately pitched 

 again, and ran up, as if to see how the stone was thrown. I 

 only on one other occasion saw the Chionis thus living gre- 

 gariously in flocks ; at Kerguelen's Land we found them 

 already paired, except one flock which I saw near the entrance 

 of Royal Sound, and at Marion Island many were already 

 paired. That they should thus form flocks, when not breeding, 

 is what might be expected from their near alliance to the 

 Plovers. 



At the rookery these birds were living on all sorts of filth 

 dropped by the penguins, and were the scavengers of the 

 place, and when I drove some of the brooders off their eggs, 

 and an egg or two got broken, the Sheath-bills, who had 

 followed us up closely, notwithstanding the slaughter we had 

 done amongst them, came and pecked at the eggs almost 

 between our legs. 



The Skuas of course were close at hand, and swooped down 

 at once on the body of a penguin that we skinned. Beyond 

 the penguin rookery was a large tract of nearly flat land, very 



