260 STORMY PETREL. 



one can examine their form and plumage with nearly as much 

 accuracy as if they were in the hand. They fly with the wings 

 forming an almost straight horizontal line with the body, the 

 legs extended behind, and the feet partly seen stretching beyond 

 the tail. Their common note of " weet, weetj" is scarcely 

 louder than that of a young Duck of a week old, and much re- 

 sembling it. During the whole of a dark, wet and boisterous, 

 night which I spent on deck, they flew about the after rigging, 

 making a singular hoarse chattering, which in sound resembled 

 the syllables patret tu cuk cuk tu tu, laying the accent strong- 

 ly on the second syllable tret. Now and then I conjectured 

 that they alighted on the rigging, making than a lower curring 

 noise. 



Notwithstanding the superstitious fears of the seamen, who 

 dreaded the vengeance of the survivors, I shot fourteen of these 

 birds one calm day, in lat. 33, eighty or ninety miles off the 

 coast of Carolina, and had the boat lowered to pick them up. 

 These I examined with considerable attention, and found the 

 most perfect specimens as follow: 



Length six inches and three quarters, extent thirteen inches 

 and a half; bill black, nostrils united in a tubular projection, the 

 upper mandible grooved thence, and overhanging the lower 

 like that of a bird of prey; head, back and lower parts, brown 

 sooty black; greater wing-coverts pale brown, minutely tipt 

 with white; sides of the Vent, and whole tail-coverts, pure 

 white; wings and tail deep black, the latter nearly even at the 

 tip, or very slightly forked; in some specimens, two or three 

 of the exterior tail feathers were white for an inch or so at the 

 root; legs and naked part of the thighs black; feet webbed, with 

 the slight rudiments of a hind toe, the membrane of the foot is 

 marked with a spot of straw yellow, and finely serrated along 

 the edges; eyes black. Male and female differing nothing in 

 colour. 



On opening these I found the first stomach large, containing 

 numerous round semitransparent substances, of an amber colour, 

 which I at first suspected to be the spawn of some fish; but on a 



