THE SNOWY PETREL. 91 



season on February 8th in 1902. In 1903 the open water was so far from our ship 

 that we saw only a few stragglers during the whole summer, and none after the New 

 Year. In 1904 we accompanied the bird to the north ourselves when we finally left 

 McMurdo Sound on February 19th. We had it with us during the whole of our 

 journey northward along the South Victoria Land coast, and off the Balleny Islands 

 on March 2nd, when it appeared in flocks of a score or more together. All were 

 uniform in size and of the larger type ; not one of the smaller type was seen, but 

 as they seemed to be in flocks and on the move, one could not consider this to be 

 characteristic of the locality. Most of the birds that we saw after the middle of 

 February in 1904 were moulting, and a shortage of primaries could be seen in the 

 wings; but in 1902 we obtained moulting birds on January llth, so that the moult 

 evidently begins quite early in that month. 



The flight of the Snow Petrel is exceedingly beautiful and dainty, and from the 

 whiteness of its plumage it is very easily lost to sight on the snow-covered pack or 

 ice-floe, appearing now for a second and now as suddenly disappearing, and there is 

 something almost ghostly in the silent flight and sudden appearance and disappearance 

 of this bird. Quite often one's attention is drawn to it by the flitting of its shadow 

 on the snowy ground rather than by the bird itself. Though its flight is so beautiful, 

 not only is its croaking guttural voice discordant, but its gait upon the snow is equally 

 unbecoming. The legs are set widely apart, and the broad webbed feet are turned 

 inwards, giving it precisely the same ungainly straddle-legged appearance that is 

 familiar in the less elegant Ossifraga fliyantea. 



On March 4, 1904, we saw the last of its kind on our way to the North in 

 S. lat. 67 and E. long. 154. In November 1901, we had seen it in S. lat. 61 46', E. 

 long. 140. Sir James Ross reported it in S. lat. 61 03' S., 146 W., where he first 

 met with it on December 18th, 1840. 



Mr. Eagle Clarke reports that it was " by far the most numerous of the few 

 species that remained for the entire winter at the South Orkneys " (60 44' S., 44 50' W.). 

 where " in summer it frequented the high precipitous sea-cliffs which formed its 

 breeding haunts, and where, during the nesting season, some 20,000 birds were 

 estimated to be present on Laurie Island alone." (Ibis, January 1906.) 



Even so far south as Cape Adare (S. lat. 71 30') the bird is reported by 

 members of the ' Southern Cross ' Expedition to have been occasionally seen late in 

 the winter, on May 15th, and even on June 17th (Dr. Bowdler Sharpe on the 

 ' Southern Cross ' Collections). And although it has been taken in mid-winter so 

 far North as the Falkland Islands, in all probability it was misled there by the 

 wanderings of an over-extensive iceberg, and it may, notwithstanding this, be 

 considered to have the most southern distribution of all known birds except the 

 Emperor Penguin. Its nesting habits have been described not only by McCormick 

 of the 'Erebus' and 'Terror' Expedition, but by Webster, of H.M.S. 'Chanticleer,' 

 who found it on the South Shetlands ; by the Germans in South Georgia, and more 



VOL. II. 



