BIRD ROCK 181 
were each occupied by a newly hatched young bird— 
a gray ball of down, so unlike anything in feathers 
I had ever seen that, if it had not been for their 
tiny, young chick- 
enike peep, I 
should have been 
inclined to pass it 
by as a wad of gray 
cotton.” Never 
more than one of 
the parent birds, 
either the male or 
female, was found 
on the nest, nor was 
a single Petrel seen 
about the Rock 96. Young Leach’s Petrel removed from bur- 
row with nesting material. 
during the day. 
The Puffins and Petrels are now the only birds 
nesting on the summit of the Rock, not a single de- 
scendant of the one hundred thousand Gannets which, 
according to Bryant, occupied the top of the Rock 
in 1860 now being found there. To-day this species 
nests only on the less accessible border ledges on 
the face of the Rock, where they are grouped in 
colonies. Most of them were incubating, but sev- 
eral were brooding their young, which ranged in 
size from the naked, black-skinned, newly hatched 
chick to those that had acquired the white, swan’s- 
downlike first plumage.” 
With the exception of two white, black-spotted 
birds, all the Gannets seen, both on Bird Rock and 
Bonaventure, were in the adult white plumage, and 
if,as has been stated, this plumage is not gained 
