The Dark-bodied Shearwater 



have heard similar tales of the abundance of ducks; but what with the long 

 prevalence of insensate market slaughter, automatic guns, and the universal 

 madness, we have to speak soberly of thousands now. Your one best 

 chance to see a million birds is to post yourself on some sea-cliff, any- 

 where from May to October, and to watch for a dark line of hurrying 

 Shearwaters outside of the kelp-beds, perhaps half a mile or so offshore. 

 It is a mere chance, then, for Shearwaters hunt in great hordes, and the 

 main host may be operating anywhere between Baja California and 

 Alaska. 



The hunting organization of the Shearwaters is a great revolving 

 ring, most nearly comparable to that of a meteoric host, say the Leonids, 

 which, though most abundant at one point of their enormous orbit, are, 

 nevertheless, strung out with substantial uniformity over the whole of 

 the remaining circuit. The whirling ring of birds drifts north or south 

 with a movement as certain and imperceptible as the "secular drift" of 

 the stars. The circle may be a comparatively small one, so that you can 

 see the returning line, the other side of the circle, a mile or so farther 

 out to sea; or it may be very large, as much as twenty-five miles in 

 diameter, so that the observer on shore has the impression of a single 

 stream of birds moving parallel to the shore, and sometimes occupying 

 days in passage. Nevertheless, there is a point somewhere upshore 

 where the line bends away and passes out to sea, to accomplish in due 

 order the return movement of the gigantic succession. 



The line itself varies from a thin ribbon, which one may easily count, 



Taken near Santa Barbara 



2002 



MASSING. AND SWIMMING RAPIDLY 



Photo by the Author 



