520 STORMY PETREL. 
numbers, and in all weathers, contributing much by their sprightly 
evolutions of wing to enliven the scene, and affording me every day 
several hours of amusement. It is indeed an interesting sigut to ob- 
serve these little birds in a gale, coursing over the waves, down the 
declivities, up the ascents of the foaming surf that threatens to burst 
over their heads, sweeping along the hollow troughs of the sea as ina 
sheltered valley, and again mounting with the rising billow, and just 
above its surface occasionally dropping its feet, which, striking the 
water, throws it up again with additional force ; sometimes leaping, 
with both legs parallel, on the surface of the roughest waves for sev- 
eral yards at a time. Meanwhile it continues coursing from side to 
side of the ship’s wake, making excursions far and wide, to the right 
and to the left, now a great way ahead, and now shooting astern for 
several hundred yards, returning again to the ship as if she were all 
the while stationary, though perhaps running at the rate of ten knots 
an hour! But the most singular peculiarity of this bird is its faculty 
of standing, and even running, on the surface of the water, which it 
performs with apparent facility. When any greasy matter is thrown 
overboard, these birds instantly collect around it, and facing to wind- 
ward, with their long wings expanded, and their webbed feet patting 
the water, the lightness of their bodies and the action of the wind on 
their wings enable them to do this with ease. In calm weather they 
perform the same maneuvre, by keeping their wings just so much in 
action as to prevent their feet from sinking below the surface. Ac- 
cording to Buffon,* it is from this singular habit that the whole genus 
have obtained the name Petrel, from the apostle Peter, who, as Scrip- 
ture informs us, also walked on the water. 
As these birds often come up immediately under the stern, one can 
examine their form and plumage with nearly as much accuracy as if 
they were in the hand. They fly with the wings forming an almost 
straight, horizontal line with the body, the legs extended behind, and 
the feet partly seen stretching beyond the tail. Their common note 
of “weet, weet,” is scarcely louder than that of a young Duck of a 
week old, and much resembling it. During the whole of a dark, wet, 
and boisterous night which I spent on deck, they flew about the after 
rigging, making a singular hoarse chattering, which in sound resem- 
bled the syllables patrét tu cuk cuk tu tu, laying the accent strongly 
on the second syllable tref. Now and then I conjectured that they 
alighted on the rigging, making then a lower, curring noise. 
Notwithstanding the superstitious fears of the seamen, who dreaded 
the vengeance of the survivors, I shot fourteen of these birds one calm 
day, in lat. 33°, eighty or ninety miles off the coast of Carolina, and 
had the boat lowered to pick them up. These I examined with con- 
siderable attention, and found the most perfect specimens as follow: — 
Length, six inches and three quarters; extent, thirteen inches and a 
half; bill, black ; nostrils, united in a tubular projection, the upper 
mandible grooved from thence, and overhanging the lower like that 
of a bird of prey ; head, back, and lower parts, brown sooty black ; 
greater wing-coverts, pale brown, minutely tipped with white ; sides 
of the vent, and whole tail-coverts, pure white , wings and tail, deep 
black, the latter nearly even at the tip, or very slightly forked ; in some 
specimens, two or three of the exterior tail-feathers were white for an 
* Burron, tome xxiii. p. 299. 
