238 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: ZOOLOGY. 



with three eggs, but two is the most usual number. The young are black 

 on coming from the egg, following the usual law with white birds, the 

 white coloring .being a lately acquired peculiarity. The young one has 

 the nostrils wide open and merely a tumidity about the posterior margin 

 of the nostrils and across the beak where the sheath is commencing to 

 grow out. 



"On sitting down on the rocks where there are pairs of Sheathbills 

 about, one soon has them around him, uttering a harsh, half-warning, 

 half-inquisitive cry on first seeing one, and venturing gradually nearer 

 and nearer, standing and gazing up at the intruder, with their heads 

 turned on one side. The birds come frequently within reach of a stick 

 and can often be knocked over in that way, or bowled over with a big 

 stone, as they will sit quietly and allow half a dozen stones, as big as 

 themselves almost, to be thrown at them. 



"At length, only after being narrowly missed several times, they take 

 flight, and make off, uttering their harsh note a succession of times. If a 

 bird be knocked over with a stick, it is usually only stunned, the sheath- 

 bills are very tenacious of life. If the one thus caught be tied by the leg 

 with a string and allowed to flutter on the rocks, in front of one as one 

 sits, the neighboring sheath-bills will come at once to fight with it and 

 peck it, and can be knocked over one after another. When courting 

 one another, the birds show all the attitudes of pigeons, the male bowing 

 his head up and down and strutting, making a sort of cooing noise. 



"The birds eat seaweed and shell fish, mussels and limpets, besides 

 acting as scavengers, as already mentioned. They carry quantities of 

 limpets and mussel shells up to the clefts or holes under the rocks which 

 they frequent. They readily feed in confinement, and we had several on 

 board the ship, running about quite at home. One of them established 

 itself in one of the cutters for a short time, and used to take a fly around 

 during the voyage to Heard Island and return again to the ship. 



" The birds, though usually to be seen running on the rocks, can fly 

 remarkably well, and their flight is like that of a pigeon. I have seen them 

 flying at a great height about the cliffs of Christmas Harbour." (Notes 

 by a naturalist on the "Challenger," H. N. Moseley, M.A., F.R.S., 1879, 

 pp. 209 to 211.) 



