Around the Horn for Petrels 



By JOHN TREADWELL NICHOLS 



With photographs by the author 



THERE is a glamour which hangs about the sea, due perhaps to its dangers, 

 its wildness, its mystery. There is a pecuhar fascination in the study of 

 pelagic birds. 



For some years the writer has been particularly interested in the Albatrosses 

 and Petrels, and in the latter part of the year 1906 was fortunate enough to make 

 a trip to their center of abundance, the Southern Ocean. Some species of this 

 group occur on all oceans, but to find them in abundance one should cross the 

 parallel of, say ^1,° south latitude. At about this point the weather changes Irom 

 good to bad. South of it are the westerly gales and the birds. 



The ship, a square-rigged, iron sailing vessel which plies between New York 

 and Honolulu, T. H., averaging about one year to the round trip, left her wharf, 

 near the Battery, early one August morning. That same day, when well to sea, 

 Mother Carey's Chickens became common. As to size, color and habits, birds 

 of the Petrel order tend to be grouped about certain types. One of the best marked 

 of these groups is the Mother Carey's Chickens. This again is separable into two 

 structurally quite different divisions. One has short legs and generally a forked 

 tail, and is characteristic of the Northern Hemisphere. A representative of it, 

 Leach's Petrel, breeds on our coast from Maine northward. The Mother Carey's 

 Chickens that were following the ship were, how^ever, a long-legged, square-tailed 

 species, Wilson's Petrel, which breeds in the far south in our winter, the southern 

 summer, and, crossing the equator, is common off our coast in summer. For a few 

 days they were about the ship, then they were gone. 



We passed through a great, practically birdless area in mid- Atlantic, and 

 once seven days went by without a bird, — the longest period of the voyage, — 

 perhaps of my life. One day, out in this barren region, a beautiful white Tropic 

 Bird was seen resting on the water. When the ship came abreast of it, it rose and 

 flew away with characteristic flapping flight, and with a glass it was possible to 

 see plainly its elongated central tail-feathers. Tropic Birds are as truly ocean 

 wanderers as any fowl of the sea, and particularly characteristic of fine weather 

 and the trade-wind belts of the Pacific. Here they are not numerous, and sometimes 

 days go by without them; but again there are several flying about the ship, and 

 their constant nasal cry becomes as familiar as the sunshine and the dancing 

 trade-wind waves. They are higher flyers than the Petrel tribe, and this and their 

 flapping flight mark them at once as of a different kidney from those low-sailing 

 birds left in the westerly weather farther south. Sailors call them 'bo'sns,' and 

 liken their elongated central tail-feathers to the ' marlin-spike ' a boatswain might 

 be expected to carry with him. 



But, to return to Petrels. As we approached the equator, with South America 

 drawing closer to the west and Africa to the east, there was a Mother Carey's 



(2+5) 



