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THE FRIGATE-BIRD. 
The flight of the frigate-bird, or frigate-pelican, with wings eight 
feet in span, is even more astonishing for velocity and force. As 
Audubon says, the swiftest hawks are obliged to pursue their victims 
at times for half a mile at the highest pitch of their speed before they 
can secure them ; but the frigate-bird swoops from on high like a 
meteor, and on nearing the object of his pursuit, which his keen vision 
has descried at a distance, darts on either side to cut off all retreat, 
forcing it to drop or disgorge the fish which it has just caught. " Yonder 
over the waves leaps the brilliant dolphin as he pursues the flying- 
fishes, which he expects to seize the moment they drop into the water. 
The frigate-bird, who has marked them, closes his wings, dives towards 
them, and immediately ascending, holds one of the tiny things across 
his bill. Already, fifty yards across the sea, he spies a porpoise in full 
chase, launches towards the spot, and in passing seizes the mullet 
which had escaped from its dreaded foe ; but now, having caught a fish 
too large to be at once swallowed, he rises witli it into the air, as if 
bound for the skies. Three or four of his own tribe have watched 
him and observed his success. They shoot towards him on broadly 
extended pinions, mount upwards in wide circles, smoothly, yet as 
swiftly as himself They are now all at the same height, and 
each, on overtaking him, lashes him with strong wings, and tugs at the 
prey. See ! one has robbed him ; but before he can secure the con- 
tested fish, it drops. One of the other birds has cauglit it; but he 
is pursued by all. From bill to bill, and through the air, rapidly 
falls the fish, until it drops quite dead on the water, and sinks into 
the deep." 
Among birds of great faculties of flight may be classed the stormy 
petrels, which, under the grotesque name of Mother Carey's Chickens, 
were so long dreaded by the seaman as harbingers of storm and 
calamity. They can keep on the wing all day ; and are found at vast 
distances from the land, skimming the foamy crests of the billows, 
darting along the darkling troughs of the sea as through a mountsiin- 
valley, and now apparentl}^ riding on tlie tempest-tossed surface. 
" Up ami down ! up and down ! 
From the base of the wave to the billow's crowii ; 
