6oo 



COLLEGE ZOOLOGY 



The two eggs are laid in a slight depression in the ground, near 

 water. 



FAMILY PODICIPEDID.E. GREBES. The grebes are smaller 

 than the loons, but are excellent swimmers and divers. There 

 are about twenty- five species in the family, distributed through- 

 out the world, chiefly about fresh waters. The six to eight eggs 

 are laid in a nest consisting usually of a mass of floating rushes. 

 Order 12. Procellariiformes. ALBATROSSES and PETRELS. 

 These are marine birds with tubular external nostrils, fully 



webbed toes, and 

 long, narrow wings. 

 They are strong 

 fliers, gregarious, 

 and come to land 

 rarely except to 

 lay their eggs. 

 There are about 

 fifteen species of 

 albatrosses; six of 

 these have been 

 reported from 

 North America. 

 The wandering al- 

 batross, Diomedea 

 exulans (Fig. 488), 

 is over three and 

 a half feet in length, and has a spread of wing of over ten feet. 

 The petrels, fulmars, and shearwaters, of which there are 

 about seventy species, belong to the family PROCELLARIID^E. 

 The fulmars are large gull-like birds. The common fulmar, 

 Fulmarus glacialis, is abundant in the North Atlantic. It lays 

 its single, white egg on crags over the sea. The shearwaters are 

 very restless birds that inhabit all oceans. The common Atlantic 

 shearwater is Puffinus major. The stormy petrels are small 

 birds under ten inches in length. The common stormy petrel, 



FIG. 488. Wandering albatross, Diomedea exulans. 

 (From Evans.) 



