206 
COMMON GANNET. 
profusion of food with which their parents supply them, regardless in a great 
measure of their own wants. The pilot further told me that the stench on 
the summit of the rock was insupportable, covered as it is during the breed- 
ing season, and after the first visits of the fishermen, with the remains of 
carcasses of old and young birds, broken and rotten eggs, excrements, and 
multitudes of fishes. He added that the Gannets, although cowardly birds, 
at times stand and await the approach of a man, with open bill, and -strike 
furious and dangerous blows. Let me now, reader, assure you that unless 
you had seen the sight witnessed by my party and myself that day, you 
could not form a correct idea of the impression it has to this moment left 
on my mind. 
The extent of the southward migration of the Gannet, after it has reared 
its young, is far greater perhaps than has hitherto been supposed. I have 
frequently seen it on the Gulf of Mexico, in the latter part of autumn and in 
winter ; and a few were met with, in the course of my last expedition, as far 
as the entrance of the Sabine river into the Gulf. Being entirely a maritime 
species, it never proceeds inland, unless forced by violent gales, which have 
produced a few such instances in Nova Scotia and the State of Maine, as 
well as the Floridas, where I saw one that had been found dead in the woods 
two days after a furious hurricane. The greater number of the birds of this 
species seen in these warm latitudes during winter are young of that or the 
preceding year. My friend John Bachman has informed me that during 
one of his visits to the Sea Islands off the shores of South Carolina, on the 
2nd of July, 1836, he observed a flock of Gannets of from fifty to a hun- 
dred, all of the colouring of the one in my plate, and which was a bird in 
its first winter plumage. They were seen during several days on and about 
Cole’s Island, at times on the sands, at others among the rolling breakers. 
He also mentions having heard Mr. Giles, an acquaintance of his, who 
knows much about birds, say, that in the course of the preceding summer 
he had seen a pair of Gannets going to, and returning from, a nest in a tree ! 
This is in accordance with the report of Captain Napoleon Coste, who 
commanded the United States revenue cutter Campbell, placed at my 
disposal during my visit to Texas, and who was lieutenant as well as pilot 
of the Marion. He stated that he had found a branding place on the coast 
of Georgia, occupied by a flock of old. and therefore White Gannets, the 
nests of all of which were placed upon trees. No one can be greatly sur- 
prised at these reports, who knows, as I do, that the Brown Gannet, Sula 
fusca, breeds both on trees and on dry elevated sand-bars. During winter 
months I have generally observed single birds at some considerable distance 
from the shore out at sea. sometimes indeed bevond what mariners call 
