OCEAN WANDERERS 



advancing wave. Something was cast struggling 

 ashore, helpless before each succeeding wave that 

 worried it as a wild beast its prey. When I reached 

 the spot, I picked up a Leach's Petrel. Poor thing, 

 it was bedraggled with water and with its own oil, 

 and evidently near the bourne of life. The kindest 

 thing I could do was to put my heel on it and end 

 its sufferings. I wondered if this were not one of 

 innumerable like cases, where the bird tires of being 

 kept awing by the raging of the elements, and falls, 

 at length, exhausted, into the vortex of destruction. 



The movements of these birds depend largely 

 upon the supply of food, which consists of small 

 fish and all sorts of minute marine creatures. They 

 love to congregate where whales are found, to pick 

 up any leavings and secure their share of the small 

 bait-fish that the monsters pursue. Shearwaters 

 and Petrels are redolent with oil. When handled 

 they squirt out a yellowish oil from the nostrils. 

 When the whales are about, the water has some- 

 times, in calm weather, seemed to me noticeably 

 greasy, and I was tempted to imagine that the 

 Petrels, that were everywhere pattering about, were 

 engaged in skimming from the water choice and 

 nutritious whale-oil ! The birds are scavengers in 

 part, but one wonders what they find to eat, as there 

 is so little on the ocean surface visible to the human 

 eye. The fact is, however, that the upper stratum 

 of the ocean teems with life. 



One is never sure of finding them abundant in 

 any one locality, even on successive days. Now 

 and then I have seen numbers of them just off 

 Chatham Bars, but usually they are not common 



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