669 A. E. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 
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The bird itself was variously described as of the size of a pigeon, 
green plover, or sea mew; its bill was hooked and strong, and it 
could bite viciously ; its back was ‘russet brown’ and there were 
russet and white quillfeathers in its wings; its belly was white. It 
arrived in October and remained until the first of June. 
There is no known living bird that agrees with it in these several 
characters. Most certainly it could not have been a shearwater, as 
Hurdis and others have supposed, nor any known member of the 
petrel family, all of which have such a disagreeable flavor that 
neither their flesh nor eggs are used as food unless in cases of starva- 
tion. 
The following graphic account of the bird and its habits was 
written by Mr. W. Strachy, one of the party wrecked with Sir 
George Somers in the ‘Sea Venture,’ July, 1609: 
“A kinde of webbe-footed Fowle there is, of the bignesse of an 
English greene Plover, or Sea-Meawe, which all the Summer we saw 
not, and in the darkest nights of November and December (for in 
the night they onely feed) they would come forth, but not flye farre 
from home, and hovering in the ayre, and over the Sea, made a 
strange hollow and harsh howling. They call it of the cry which it 
maketh, a Cohow. Their colour is inclining to Russet, with white 
bellies, as are likewise the long feathers of their wings, Russet and 
White, these gather themselves together and breed in those Ilands 
which are high, and so farre alone into the Sea, that the Wilde 
Hogges cannot swimme over them, and there in the ground they 
have their Burrowes, like Conyes ina Warren, and so brought in the 
loose Mould, though not so deepe; which Birds with a light bough 
in a darke night (as in our Lowbelling) wee caught, I have beene at 
the taking of three hundred in an houre, and wee might have laden 
our Boates. Our men found a prettie way to take them, which was 
by standing on the Rockes or Sands by the Sea-side, and hollowing, 
laughing, and making the strangest outcry that possibly they could ; 
with the noyse whereof the Birds would come flocking to that place, 
and settle upon the very armes and head of him that so cried, and 
still creepe neerer and neerer, answering the noyse themselves; by 
‘which our men would weigh them with their hand, and which 
weighed heaviest they took for the best and let the others alone, and 
so our men would take twentie dozen in two houres of the chiefest 
of them ; and they were a good and well relished Fowle, fat and full 
as a Partridge. In January wee had great store of their Egges, 
which are as great as an Hennes Egge, and so fashioned and white 
