CHAPTER III. 



BIRDS. 



These seven rocky islets belong nominally to the 

 Venezuelan Government, but in reality to the sea-birds, 

 the rightful lords, from ages immemorial, of their 

 inhospitable and wild retreats. 



Orquilla, the island we had landed on, has roughly 

 the shape of a saddle-backed mountain, with a base of 

 perhaps two or three miles and a height of nearly seven 

 hundred feet ; Ludwig puts it at a much greater height. 



All the time that we have been scrambling up among 

 its huge boulders of granite (diorite *) the air has been 

 filled with a multitude of birds — ten thousand flying 

 forms, circling, hovering, skimming, crossing, dipping, 

 swooping, rising and falling. Yet hardly a soimd is to 

 be heard. Only occasionally a harsh guttural note is 

 uttered, as some bird, taken by surprise, sweeps off from 

 its nest. 



Birds had followed us from the time we got within a 

 •quarter of a mile of our landing place. Some of them, 

 the gannets, had come swooping down, sailing over the 

 boat with motionless wings, in a flight which is the very 

 acme of graceful effortless motion. They came so close, 

 that several times we could almost have touched them as 

 they balanced themselves, just astern of the boat, against 

 the stiff breeze. As they glided thus with wings outspread, 

 they moved their heads from side to side, watching and 



♦Specimens kindly identified for me by Dr. Pryor of the Natural 

 History Museum, South Kensington. 



