SHEARWATERS 
Resorting to land only during the breeding season, the Manx shearwater 
flies swiftly and gracefully over the open sea, shearing or skimming close to 
the waves. About the size of a pigeon, it has a sooty gray back; its breast 
and underparts are white. It generally hunts for food at night. Occasionally 
the shearwater dives below the surface of the water, reappearing with a 
struggling fish in its strong hooked beak. It can remain submerged for about 
twenty seconds. Its stout webbed feet serve to propel it through the water. 
During the summer months this shearwater retires to the most lonely 
coasts to mate. At this time flocks of these birds dot the turfy islands and 
sloping cliffs, and the air is filled with their cry, a cuck-cuck-coo uttered 
three times. The Faroes, Norway, Iceland, the Azores and Madeira are 
favorite breeding spots. In a nest of dried grass situated at the inner end 
of a burrow, the mother bird lays a single white egg, about two and one 
half inches long. The male helps in the process of incubation, which begins 
early in May. The young birds are covered with a thick, fluffy down. They 
remain in the nest until they are full-fledged and very fat, whereupon they 
leave the cliffs for the open sea. The fat young birds are considered excel¬ 
lent eating, and one species, which frequents islands near Australia, is for 
this reason known as the “mutton bird.” 
In late autumn, their domestic life over, shearwaters shift to more 
southerly regions. Great flocks of them gather off the coast of England, 
where they are called “puffin of the Isle of Man,” and they have been seen 
as far south as the Argentine. They are rare in the United States. 
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