OCEAN WANDERERS 



seize my prize, when there came a sudden reviving. 

 Wings were spread, and away it went, right from 

 under my very nose. I felt the keenest disappoint- 

 ment until, on the return trip, another of the 

 unknown birds came in sight. With palpitating 

 heart I threw out livers, and as eagerly did it accept 

 the invitation. This time the bird was mine, and 

 subsequent research identified it as Corey's Shear- 

 water, which had been newly discovered to science 

 only a couple of years previously, in the very same 

 locality. As far as I know, I was thus the second 

 naturalist to secure a specimen. This is the nearest 

 I ever came to being the discoverer of a new species 

 of bird. I saw that day one other specimen, and 

 thought that all of them acted precisely like their 

 more familiar relatives. 



When I compare the two common Shearwaters, 

 I recall little that is distinctive, other than their 

 colour. The Sooty fellow seems a little the heavier 

 built, but this does not appear to affect its flight. I 

 love to watch either of them fly. On a windy day 

 when, away out there on the boundless deep, the- 

 swells are assuming almost alarming proportions, 

 and the advancing wall of water menaces the little 

 white-winged sailing-craft that lies deep down in 

 the hollow, the Shearwaters are in their element. 

 With quick beatings of wing they dash past in the 

 teeth of the breeze, dirigible flying-machines that 

 they are. Now they set their wings, fully extended 

 and slightly depressed, and scale along the trough 

 of the sea, the tips of the wings almost touching 

 the water. Then they turn, and shoot up over the 

 breaking crest of the wave, the blast turning them 



103 



