﻿Stray Birds at Sea 



By F. M. BENNETT, Lieut. Commander, U. S. N. 



IN January and February of the present year the writer crossed the 

 Atlantic Ocean as a member of the naval expedition engaged in towing 

 a large floating dry dock from Chesapeake Bay to the Philippine Islands, 

 which employment is mentioned as a preliminary explanation of the slow 

 progress that is shown by the following notes. 



We left the capes of the Chesapeake the evening of December 29, 1905, 

 and stood offshore on a southeast course. A number of Herring Gulls, 

 probably about forty, had followed the ships down the bay and continued 

 with us for four days at sea, the number remaining apparently undiminished 

 from day to day. The morning of the fifth day, when we were about four 

 hundred miles from Cape Henry, they were all gone and we saw them no 

 more. The eighth day out we passed within sight of Bermuda, but, to my 

 disappointment, no birds of either land or sea came within sight of the ship. 



January 10, we met a large German steamer standing to the westward. 

 Soon after she had passed out of sight I observed a large bird flying wildly 

 about our ships, from one to another as though lost. I did not see this bird 

 close enough to identify it, but from its size and color would without 

 hesitation have pronounced it a Herring Gull but for its wider spread of 

 wings. We had then progressed to the southeast nearly one thousand miles 

 from Cape Henry, and the nearest point in the United States was Cape 

 Hatteras, more than eight hundred sea-miles away. I am sure this bird had 

 not been following our ships, and it would be interesting to know if it had 

 followed the German steamer from Europe, more than two thousand miles, 

 or if it was a sea wanderer lost from its kind. It continued with us all that 

 day, but the next morning had disappeared. 



The evening of January 14, I found on deck, partly hidden under a 

 tarpaulin hatch cover, a small, dark-colored bird so exhausted that it made 

 no resistance to being taken up in the hand, and it remained passive on my 

 desk while I measured and examined it for purposes of identification. It was 

 a Leach's Petrel, and my experience was certainly unique in having one 

 of these wild, storm-loving birds alive and quiet in my hand. The tired 

 look of its eyes, in combination with the shape of the head, gave it a 

 peculiarly gentle and dove-like expression quite at variance with the 

 generally supposed boisterous character of the weather in which the bird is 

 so often pictured as delighting. No such birds had been seen about the 

 ship, and in many years of sea-going I never before saw a Petrel in a warm 

 latitude, nor have I ever heard of one flying aboard a ship. The accepted 

 theory is that they sleep and rest on the water. At the time we were 1,1 20 

 sea-miles in a straight line southeast of Cape Hatteras, or nearly 1,300 

 land-miles. 



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