THE FORK-TAILED PETREL. 



THE 

 STORMY PETEEL AND FORK-TAILED PETREL 



(Procellaria pelagica and P. leachi) 



THE Stormy Petrel is specially interesting as being the 

 smallest web-footed bird known to naturalists. Like all its 

 congeners it is a bird of the wide rolling sea, only coming to 

 land to rear its young, or when driven in by an unusually 

 severe gale. At sea the habits of this little fowl are very 

 interesting. It loves the stormy waves, and flits lightly 

 over the billows, never seeming to tire or to heed the 

 rough weather. You may watch it course round the vessel, 

 now high in air on fluttering wing, then skimming just above 

 the big waves, descending deep down into their trough, or 

 mounting lightly up their glassy sides and disappearing over 

 their foaming crests into those beyond. Every now and then 

 it stretches out its legs and seems to patter along the smooth 

 surface of the mighty rollers, and often pauses with wings held 



