GANNET AND FRIGATE-BIRD 
291 
Man-o’-War “Hawk.” It is a long-distance 
(Iyer, and goes out far from land. Its beak 
is long, hooked at the end, and really very strong, 
but its legs are so short and stumpy they seem 
to be deformed. Under the throat there is a 
patch of skin quite devoid of feathers, which 
really is a sort of aii-sac. 
I once found the roosting-place of a colony 
of about forty of these birds, on the top of a 
perpendicular cliff seventy-five feet high on the 
seaward side of an island at the northwestern 
point of Trinidad. The birds came there regu- 
larly every night, to roost in some small dead 
trees that almost overhung the precipices. 
They were not nesting at that time, however, 
and were so very wakeful that even though I 
went to their roost before daylight, I did not 
succeed in killing even one bird. 
This bird inhabits the warm oceans of the 
Old World, as well as the New, and Mr. II. O. 
Forbes states that in the Cocos-Keeling Islands 
they are regular pirates, and gain their liveli- 
hood by remaining inactive, and forcing honest 
fisherfolk, like the gannets, and noddy terns, to 
disgorge for their lazy benefit the fish they bring 
home from distant fishing-grounds. 
Mr. R. J. Beck found Frigate-Birds nesting 
in the Guadaloupe Archipelago, which were so 
tame and unsuspicious that he was able to 
approach quite near, and make the photo- 
graph which is reproduced on the opposite 
page. 
