174 Idylls of the Field. 



yellow bill. He turns his smooth head this way and 

 that, keeping sharp look-out on the seething water; 

 his whole frame quivers with the beats of his strong 

 wings. He pauses a moment just overhead, and then, 

 falling back, he too is swept unresistingly away. 



Some forty yards from shore, now skimming the 

 rough crest of a breaker, now lost in the trough of a 

 wave, and evidently quite in his element in this war of 

 waters, is a much less familiar figure than herring-gull 

 or kittiwake — a little dark bird whose flight and figure 

 are suggestive of a swallow. 



It is a stormy petrel, a real sea-rover, whose whole 

 existence, except for the brief space of the breeding 

 season, is spent out of sight of land. At other times, 

 only a long spell of rough weather brings it off the sea. 



Modern science has dispelled the mist of fable that 

 so long obscured the life-history of this little bird. No 

 longer is it looked upon as a herald of the storm ; 

 probably not even in a forecastle yarn is it said to 

 hatch its eggs under its wings. 



There are many spots round the coast, especially in 

 the north, and in outlying islands, where in the early 

 summer the petrel comes ashore to lay, in a crevice in 

 the rock, or in a burrow in the sand, her one large egg ; 

 but as she is nocturnal in her habits, leaving her nest 

 only when other birds retire to roost, she is even then 

 but seldom seen. 



Were there any truth in the weird legend which sees 

 in the stormy petrel the wandering spirit of some 



