WILSON'S PETREL. 79 



seems to spend its lifetime on the wing. On more than one occasion it was seen by 

 sledging parties on the ice plain of the Great Barrier, some sixty miles from open water 

 (78 30' S. lat.), but always on the wing, and apparently never tired. 



Its food, consisting of minute crustaceans, is picked up from the surface of the 

 water on the wing. Flitting about from wave to wave, the little Petrel delicately 

 treads the water to steady itself a moment, while it picks up a tiny morsel. 



As we left the southernmost area, we saw it each day from February 19th to 

 March 3rd ; but on that day, when amongst the Balleny Islands, we saw the last of 

 the icebergs and with them the last of Oceanites. 



Five days later on, when in S. lat. 61, we fell in with Cymodroma grallaria, and 

 from that time onwards they became more and more abundant, and apparently took 

 the place of Oceanites. 



FREG-ETTA MELANOGASTER. 



Tftalassiilroma melanog aster, Gould, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., xiii. (1844), p. 367. 



Fregetta melanogaster, Gigl., " Faun. Vert. Oceano," 1870, p. 38 ; Sharpe, Rep. ' Southern Cross ' Coll., 

 (1902), p. 141, iUgm citata ; Eagle Clarke, Birds of South Orkney Ids., Ibis, Jan., 1906, p. 168. 



THIS bird we met first on September 1st, 1901, in the Atlantic Ocean. There were 

 a number of them, and they kept about our wake and stern quarters, rarely flapping 

 their wings, but sailing up and down close over the waves. The distribution of black 

 on the under parts, extending from the chin to the tail, can be easily made out when 

 watching the birds upon the wing. The white of the axillary region joining with the 

 white on the rump and under wing coverts does not meet beneath on the breast as 

 it does in Cymodroma grallaria. We saw the bird fairly constantly in the South 

 Atlantic throughout September and on to the 16th of October in large numbers, 

 twenty or thirty following in our wake with their very characteristic flight, halting 

 and then darting forward as though they had dipped their toes in scalding water. 

 Again on October 20th they were exceptionally plentiful, and a few appeared almost 

 every day until November 16th (61 S. 140 E.) when they left us as we came within 

 sight of ice, and were not seen again. 



Although they generally fly in the wake of the ship they also constantly 

 travel round her, and may often be seen on the bows. We obtained no specimen. 

 The bird is a great wanderer, and though it has been taken in Kerguelen Island, New 

 Zealand, and has been reported from the Southern Oceans generally, it has also been 

 taken as far north as the Bay of Bengal and the Tropic of Cancer in the North 

 Atlantic, and quite recently has been found by the Scottish Antarctic Expedition, 

 breeding on December 5th, so far south as the South Orkney Islands. (Eagle Clarke, 

 op. cit., p. 168.) 



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