35^ Cape Pigeons and Whale Birds 



the grim loneliness of the vast Southern Sea, the Whale 

 Birds are content with their own company, but that 

 is always in large numbers. Again, a great distinction 

 from all other Southern Sea birds, who, while rarely 

 abiding in entire solitude as regards their own kind, 

 almost always confine their companionship to one or 

 two chosen chums with whom to scour the wide free 

 spaces of Antarctica, Whale Birds are never seen but 

 in flocks numbering some hundreds, and that only 

 when there is much food about. Yet I never saw them 

 feeding at such a time. I have often seen them 

 hovering about above the crowds of vociferous roy- 

 sterers assisting at the demolishment of a dead whale ; 

 but it seemed a pure absurdity to imagine them de- 

 scending into that dread arena within reach of lethal 

 beaks and mighty wings, for they are tiny birds, 

 scarcely larger than the stormy petrel, and more 

 elegantly built. 



The sandpiper is, I think, the nearest of possibly 

 familiar birds with which I can compare them. White 

 and dove colour is their plumage, their main charac- 

 teristic timidity, and their voice has a gently cooing 

 note in it, as if deprecating their enterprise in thus 

 apparently coming into serious competition with the 

 far more strenuous inhabitants of the sea spaces. It 

 is principally for this reason that I have called them 

 mysterious. I cannot at all understand how they are 

 able to hold their own, to live and keep plentiful in 

 those stern regions. 



In the particulars which follow I hope it will be 

 understood that I am describing entirely from memory, 

 my mind must reach back a quarter of a century for 

 detail unobtainable elsewhere. Imagine a thrush, 

 almost pure white except across the wings and the 

 top of the head, and with wings half as long again, 



