48 COMMON GANNET. 



soundings, but rarely young ones, they generally keeping much nearer to the 

 shores, and procuring their food in shallower water. 



The flight of the Gannet is powerful, well sustained, and at times ex- 

 tremely elegant. While travelling, whether in fine or foul weather, they 

 fly low over the surface of the water, flapping their wings thirty or forty 

 times in succession, in the manner of the Ibis and the Brown Pelican, and 

 then sailing about an equal distance, with the wings at right angles to the 

 body, and the neck extended forwards. But, reader, to judge of the ele- 

 gance of this bird while on wing, I would advise you to gaze on it from the 

 deck of any of our packet ships, when her commander has first communi- 

 cated the joyful news that you are less than three hundred miles from the 

 nearest shore, whether it be that of merry England or of my own beloved 

 country. You would then see the powerful fisher, on well-spread pinions, 

 and high over the water, glide silently along, surveying each swelling wave 

 below, and coursing with so much ease and buoyancy as to tempt you to 

 think that had you been furnished with equal powers of flight, you might 

 perform a journey of eighty or ninety miles without the slightest fatigue in 

 a single hour. But perhaps at the very moment when these thoughts have 

 crossed your mind, as they many times have crossed mine on such occasions, 

 they are suddenly checked by the action of the bird, which, intent on filling 

 its empty stomach, and heedless of your fancies, plunges headlong through 

 the air, with the speed of a meteor, and instantaneously snatches the fish 

 which its keen sight had discovered from on high. Now perchance you 

 may see the snow-white bird sit buoyantly for awhile on the bosom of its 

 beloved element, either munching its prey, or swallowing it at once. Or 

 perhaps, if disappointed in its attempt, you will see it rise by continued 

 flappings, shaking its tail sideways the while, and snugly covering its broad 

 webbed feet among the under coverts of that useful rudder, after which it 

 proceeds in a straight course, until its wings being well supplied by the 

 flowing air, it gradually ascends to its former height, and commences its 

 search anew. 



In severe windy weather, I have seen the Gannet propelling itself against 

 the gale by sweeps of considerable extent, placing its body almost sideways 

 or obliquely, and thus alternately, in the manner of Petrels and Guillemots; 

 and I have thought that the bird then moved with more velocity than at any 

 other time, except when plunging after its prey. Persons who have seen it 

 while engaged in procuring food, must, like myself, have been surprised 

 when they have read in books that Gannets "are never known to dive/' and 

 yet are assured that they "have been taken by a fish fastened to a board sunk 

 to the depth of two fathoms, in which case the neck has either been found 

 dislocated, or the bill firmly fixed in the wood." With such statements 



