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LAND BIRDS AT SEA. 

 By Surgeon K. Hurlstone Jones, M.B., R.N., F.L.S. 



No one who has at certain seasons of the year made anything 

 that can be called a voyage at sea can have failed to observe the 

 remarkable fact that often, when far away from land, birds other 

 than sea birds come on board the ship. These birds are almost 

 all of them migrants, and it is mainly during the spring and 

 autumn months that they are observed to frequent the hospitable 

 refuge that a ship at sea offers them. 



Most of these birds are, I believe, such as have by some 

 accident, often doubtless stress of weather, lost their way and 

 their companions in migration at the same time, and, wandering 

 over the waste of water, gladly take advantage of any passing ship 

 for the purpose of resting. Some few may perhaps have been 

 blown out to sea by gales of wind, or even chased from the land 

 by birds of prey. Often the wanderers have evidently lost their 

 bearings, for they hang about the ship much longer than is 

 actually necessary for the purpose of resting, and indeed gener- 

 ally, I think, until nearing the land. 



In my own limited experience the birds have come on board 

 either singly or in twos and threes. In the following notes are 

 jotted down the occurrence on various occasions and in different 

 localities of a few such birds. They are not very many, and, I 

 fear, they are not very important. They were made partly whilst 

 I was surgeon to the steamship ' Anselm,' of Liverpool, in 1897, 

 and partly during my service in H.M.S. ' Repulse,' of the 

 Channel Squadron. In the ' Anselm ' I sailed from Liverpool 

 to Hamburg, and thence to Havre, Lisbon, Madeira, and Brazil. 

 In the Channel Squadron most of my time at sea has been spent 

 cruising off the coasts of Spain and Portugal, though I have also 

 been to Sardinia in the Mediterranean, besides much cruising in 

 British waters. The first notes I have, however, of land birds at 

 sea are curiously not of their actual occurrence on board the ship. 



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