406 The Frigate Bird 



Laysan he many times noticed the Frigate Birds 

 snatch a young one from a nest and eat it. Sometimes, 

 he says, the parent bird would give chase, but the 

 matter always ended by one or other of them eating 

 the young bird. They would even take young birds 

 out of the nest that were almost fuUy fledged. Now 

 this is a truly diabolic characteristic, not shared by 

 any other sea-bird, and hardly to be surpassed by the 

 all-embracing voracity and ferocity of the vulture. 

 There can, I think, be but little doubt that the Frigate 

 Bird is a close relation of the pelican, but his habits 

 certainly entitle him to be called the vulture of 

 the sea. 



But it is high time that I attempted a description 

 of the Frigate Bird, seeing that, although of so romantic 

 and extraordinary a character, he is little known to 

 the great majority of readers. The body of the Frigate 

 Bird then is, when fuU grown, about as large as that 

 of a raven, but more elegantly shaped, of course, for 

 its great power of flight. Its colour is rusty, not 

 glossy, black, in none have I ever seen a white feather. 

 Moreover, for some reason I do not pretend to fathom, 

 it does not keep its plumage in good order, the feathers 

 never lying neat and sleeked, as in other sea-birds. 



Considering the size of its body, the wings of the 

 Frigate Bird may truly be called enormous, but to 

 speak of them as one naturalist of eminence does, 

 as being fourteen feet from tip to tip is just a wild 

 piece of exaggeration. I have measured a great 

 many, but never found one that exceeded six feet in 

 the breadth of its pinions, and it would indeed be an 

 extraordinary specimen that attained to a wing-spread 

 of eight feet. Even those I measured had the ends 

 of their wings extending when folded more than half- 

 way down the very long tail and overlapping one 



