652 
FOREST AND STREAM 
November, 1918 
THE FRIENDLY MOTHER CAREY’S CHICKENS 
MEMBERS OF THE GREAT PETREL FAMILY WHICH INHABITS EVERY OCEAN, 
THEIR MERRY DANCING COMPANY ROBS THE GREAT DEEP OF ITS LONELINESS 
S MALL, black and white, butterfly-like 
ocean sprites are Mother Carey’s 
chickens, and no ocean is without 
them. True, the “chicks” of the different 
quarters of the world may not be of pre¬ 
cisely the same kind, but their size, color¬ 
ing, and manner of coursing over the sea 
are enough alike so that few persons dis¬ 
tinguish one from another. To sailors, 
especially, they are all assigned to the com¬ 
mon brood of Mother Carey, a lady about 
whom next to nothing is known, but who 
is doubtless related to the far-famed Davy 
Jones. 
The Mother Carey’s chickens belong to 
the great petrel family, a group of strictly 
pelagic birds characterized by the tubular 
form of their nostrils. The commonest 
species of the European coast is the stormy 
petrel ( Thalassidroma pelagica), a bird 
which the Faroe Islanders are reported to 
dig out of its nest-burrow for the sake of 
using its extraordinarily fat and oily body 
as a candle. On the Atlantic coast of 
Canada and the United States we have two 
other species. One of these, the short¬ 
legged, fork-tailed, Leach’s petrel ( Ocean- 
odroma leucorhoa) , breeds in the north 
and migrates southward to the equator; 
the other, Wilson’s petrel ( Oceanites ocean- 
icus), is a long-legged bird with yellow 
webs which comes from the Far South to 
spend the season of our summer in north 
temperate seas. The same two species are 
found in the Pacific, but there Wilson’s 
petrel appears not to invade the northern 
ocean to so great an extent as in the At¬ 
lantic. The tropical and southern Pacific, 
moreover, is inhabited by several other 
kinds of petrels whose size and color-pat¬ 
tern admit them to the family that is under 
the popular patronage of Mother Carey. 
At this season, scarcely six weeks after 
the Wilson’s petrels were last seen flitting 
over the waters of our northern seacoasts, 
the same birds are preparing to nest on 
bleak and icy, subantarctic islands beyond 
the fiftieth parallel of south latitude. Re¬ 
cently I heard an old fisherman say, with 
an air of mystery and finality, that no one 
knew where Mother Carey’s chickens went 
in the autumn. But I was able to tell him, 
not because I had read the answer in books, 
but because I have followed the little wan¬ 
derers on the long journey to their only 
terrestrial home. 
E ARLY in the summer of 1912, I started 
on a voyage southward from New 
York, and Wilson’s petrels, picking 
up the track of the steamer off Sandy 
r HE Natural History Department 
has been for nearly half a 
century a clearing-house for infor¬ 
mation of interest to all. Our read¬ 
ers are invited to send any questions 
that come under the head of this de¬ 
partment to Robert Cushman Mur¬ 
phy, in care of Forest and Stream. 
Mr. Murphy, who is Curator of the 
Department of Natural Science in 
the Brooklyn Museum, zvill answer 
through these columns. [Editors.] 
“A winged flame.” The candle of the 
Faroes. From an old print 
Hook, followed us throughout the first fif¬ 
teen hundred mile lap of the journey, 
which brought us within sight of Culebra, 
W. I. On May 10th, 1912, the day after the 
steamer had left port, about a hundred 
petrels pursued us until dark. During the 
second day they dwindled off to a dozen, 
but next morning they were with us in 
countless numbers. As far as the eye 
could reach they stretched astern, coursing 
back and forth, dipping and rising with the 
undulations of the sea, crossing and re¬ 
crossing our wake, but never wandering 
more than a few hundred feet on either 
side. When they turned, their wing-tips 
sometimes cut the water; only rarely 
would a bird rise as high as the horizon 
and stand out for an instant against the 
pale sky. Fully half the time they glided 
on rigid wings, and even when they beat 
the wings it was in a gentle and leisurely 
manner; yet we were making fourteen 
knots an hour. The petrels, with their zig¬ 
zagging and circling, flew at least three 
times as far. 
The main front of this black-and-white 
army kept itself about twenty yards astern, 
but two or three individuals repeatedly 
flew alongside so closely that they almost 
brushed the rail, going ahead as far as the 
broken water at the bow and then drop¬ 
ping behind. The high-browed heads were 
drawn in close to the breast, the bills 
pointing slightly downward. The feet, 
with webs closed, extended straight out 
beyond the tail. Whenever a bit of food 
was cast over from the steamer, or whirled 
from beneath the screws, the petrels, 
with spread tails, and feet “pumping” to¬ 
gether, descended one in the track of an¬ 
other and hopped and danced merrily on 
the very top of the insubstantial ocean. As 
the vessel drew away from such a hungry 
group—a flurry of long, raised, fanning 
wings and white-banded bodies — they 
looked not like birds, but rather like flock¬ 
ing butterflies. They probably overlooked 
nothing edible in their course, so thor¬ 
oughly did they scour about, and when¬ 
ever one dropped to enjoy its find the 
others congregated at the signal. Fre¬ 
quently they fell back out of sight while 
engaged in seeking the food. 
By sunset each day the ranks of the 
petrels were greatly thinned out and by 
half past seven o’clock, at the latest, even 
the most persevering had dropped behind. 
On the_ calm evening of the third day at 
sea I actually saw the last few birds drop 
onto the ocean. In the morning they rare¬ 
ly overtook us before eight o’clock. How 
did they find us again? Certainly not as 
Professor Mosely, of the Challenger Ex¬ 
pedition, said, by “tracing the ship up again 
in the early morning by the trail of debris 
left in its wake.” If the petrels rested 
from eight o’clock in the evening until 
three next morning, we would have gained 
a hundred miles. And, considering the 
rapid dissipation of the refuse from a 
steamer, particularly when the Gulf Stream 
is crossed, there would be no trail that 
even a bird could follow. It is possible 
that the petrels located us by merely con¬ 
tinuing a straight course. There is the 
perhaps more likely alternative that we 
were followed not by the same band for 
the whole trip, but by new ones made up 
each morning of roving birds. 
