SKUAS. 373 



described, though they can be readily understood by any one 

 who sees them in nature. 



There are, however, some other inducements for the bird 

 to take this position on the wave. This is the point to 

 which the agitation of the water tends to drive the small 

 animals upon which the bird feeds ; and they lose command 

 of themselves in the tumbling water, and accumulate there, 

 so that the birds catch them more readily than when the 

 surface is smooth. " Troubled waters " are thus the best to 

 fish in for birds as well as for men j and they are also the 

 best for the larger fishes to feed in. The skimming birds, 

 and also the fishing birds proper, may be seen on the alert, 

 twitching their prey from the mid slopes of waves on the 

 wing, especially in those long seas without broken water, 

 which are, perhaps, the most beautiful states of the ocean. 



The skimming birds are so numerous and so varied, that 

 no general characters can be very descriptive of them. They 

 swim, many of them dive, and not a few walk well ; but the 

 wing is their principal organ of notion, and the bill their 

 only (or chief) prehensile instrument. The body follows the 

 principal action : it is a flying body with a fishing bill and 

 swimming feet ; and that is, perhaps, the only character more 

 general than the generic ones. 



SKUAS (Lestris). 



The birds of this genus get the name of lestris from the 

 habit they have of robbing the gulls of the prey which they 

 have swallowed. They have sometimes been called the 

 " eagles of the sea ;" and their power, their rapacity, and 

 their daring, entitle them to that name, much more than the 

 gannets and the cormorants, which, though most voracious in 

 their fishing, and often dashing in the performance of it, are 

 tame and peaceable birds in other respects. The worst that 

 one gets in the haunts of the gannet and the cormorant is a 



