GRAY WINGS 



239 



The sailors' tale of sea birds never alight- 

 ing in the water is perhaps truer, compara- 

 tively, of the petrel — Wilson's petrel (Oceanitcs 

 oceanicus) — than any other. If there is a wing 

 that never tires, that is capable of motion in- 

 definitely, week in and week out, it is that of 

 the petrel. The idea is not so impossible, not 

 so fantastic, as seems at first blush. The hu- 

 man heart beats without a pause for seventy 

 years; why not the petrel's wing for, say, sev- 

 enty hours ? It all depends upon the muscling. 

 Everyone knows the stout fibre of the heart 

 and why it does not grow weary; and yet the 

 petrel's wing-and-breast muscles are even more 

 powerful after their kind. Just so with his 

 brother, the stormy petrel {Procellaria pela- 

 gica) , the bird known to sailors as " Mother 

 Carey's Chicken," The "chicken" is, in size, 

 no larger than a robin — the very smallest of all 

 the web-footed birds. In color he is as gray- 

 black or sooty as a chimney swallow, even to 

 his legs, with the exception of some white on 

 the wings and near the tail. He is seldom if 

 ever seen resting on the sea, nor does he rest 

 or sail upon the wing like the albatross. On 

 the contrary, the wings are always moving, and 

 the flight is never straight-away, but twisting, 

 turning, gyrating. Again he is never seen higli 



Wilson's 

 petrel. 



The stormy 

 petrel. 



