Mother Carey’s 
Chickens. 
( 125 ) 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
A Silent Member. 
The Sooty Petrel, however, makes no 
sound, and the birds appear to come 
.singly. There is a sharp flicker of 
wings like a Bat overhead, and a small 
bird, which appears to be black in the 
moonlight, is flying in quick circles, just 
clearing the scrub, and often flashing 
by within a foot of one’s face. All 
seem to circle for a time, as though 
taking their bearings, and then drop 
suddenly to their burrow. Sometimes 
loose sand has filtered in and partly 
closed the entrance. Then there is a 
kicking up of dust as the birds clear it 
with busy feet, burrowing almost as 
quickly as a rabbit. If the hole is open 
the birds disappear so quickly and mys¬ 
teriously that it is almost impossible to 
say which burrow they have entered, 
though you may be watching intently 
within a few feet of them. This was 
the general experience of the watchers 
on Saturday night. Though there were 
seven persons lying for hours on the 
rookeries, and the Storm Petrels were 
coming in continuously until midnight, 
no one was able to say at midnight that 
he had absolutely seen a bird enter a 
particular burrow. Very often one felt 
sure that he had definitely located an 
odd bird, but on thrusting his arm 
immediately into the hole found always 
a solitary young bird waiting for its 
midnight meal. 
Solitary Hives. 
So they came and went all the night— 
a continuous stream of fast-flying birds, 
departing almost as quickly and silently 
as they came. As compared with most 
other fledglings, which are constantly 
tended and protected by their parents, 
these young Petrels lead strange solitary 
lives. The instant they are hatched and 
lie at the end of the burrow, a shapeless 
mass of down, distinguishable as a bird 
only in possessing legs and a beak, the 
old ones leave them and go to sea. 
This one night visit, which as nearly as 
we could compute it, lasts about seven 
minutes, is all they see of their parents. 
Until they are fully fledged they lie in 
the dark of the burrow, and are fed but 
once in 24 hours. But that one meal 
is a complete one. It consists of small 
fish, shrimps, and other minute marine 
life, which is masticated into a pulp 
like thick anchovy. The old birds seem 
to have the capacity for storing it up 
partly digested, and in that form it is 
disgorged into the throats of the young 
ones. With that one meal every 24 
hours the young become so fat that, 
when half-grown, they are a mass of fish 
oil wrapped in the softest French grey 
down, which even in well-grown birds 
often clings like a veil over the mature 
plumage. 
Taught by Hunger. 
When we went to the rockeries on 
Sunday to see the young in daylight it 
was evident that many of them had 
already been deserted. Those which 
had the full plumage, and were not dis¬ 
tinguishable from adult birds, were 
often extremely thin and light— -not 
nearlv so heavy as birds still in the 
down. The explanation of it is that 
the Storm Petrel, like the Mutton Bird, 
deserts her young as soon as they are 
strong enough to fish for themselves. 
There are no hunting lessons for the 
young as with most of the land birds. 
So strong is the love of darkness and 
desire to keep to the burrows that, if 
the old birds continued to feed them, 
they would probably remain there for 
months after they were full grown. But, 
finally, a stage is reached where night 
after night no mother comes with a meal, 
and, after living for a while on their 
own excessive fat, they are driven out 
by hunger, and start to fish for them¬ 
selves. The belief is that after all the 
young have left the burrows, and are in 
strong flight, the old ones return as a 
flock one night and take the year’s brood 
out to sea, where they will stay until 
the nesting season comes in the follow¬ 
ing November. 
A Mighty Host. 
It is hard to guess at the number of 
Stormy Petrels which nest upon Mud 
Island, and the estimates of those who 
have watched them vary from 5,000 to 
