November, 1918 
forest and stream 
653 
I h the West Indies I joined a sailing ves¬ 
sel, the brig Daisy, of New Bedford. 
Cruising eastward across the Atlantic, 
we saw no more Mother Carey’s chickens 
until September 23, at a point just south 
of the Cape Verde Islands. From this 
place and date onward, however, during a 
voyage of sixty-three days to the island of 
South Georgia, in 55 0 south latitude, the 
Wilson’s petrels were 
seen about our brig 
on every day but two. 
From dawn until dark, 
during fair weather or 
stormy, the petrels 
were nearly always in 
our wake, and some¬ 
times I heard them 
twittering in the night. 
Often we were fol¬ 
lowed by v e r i t a bl e 
clouds of them, which 
came so near that, as I 
sat in the whaleboat 
lashed across the 
Daisy’s sterij, I could 
almost touch some of 
the birds with my hand. 
Sometimes I tossed 
them small pieces of 
pork fat, upon which 
the petrels would 
swoop voraciously, 
making a graceful rise 
to check their course 
before alighting, and 
then kicking spray over 
one another in their 
eagerness to secure the unusual dainties. 
If the bits of pork sank, the petrels would 
dive for them to a depth of several times 
their length, leaping forth.dry and light¬ 
winged into the air. Frequently, instead of 
wearying toward the close of a day-long 
flight, they would become doubly active 
about sunset. For the most part they 
ceased to hunt for food; instead they 
dashed hither and thither, ecstatically 
shooting upward almost as high as the 
mast, then plunging down at great speed, 
passing often within a yard of my head, 
as barn swallows do about their nests. 
On October 10, a never-to-be-forgotten 
day, when for nine hours I toiled in a 
thirty-foot New Bedford whaleboat “fast” 
to a harpooned and extraordinarily active 
sperm whale, a whimsical incident occurred. 
Many Wilson’s petrels were feeding over 
the same area of ocean with numbers of 
whales. While we were in the midst of 
a school of whales, it chanced that a 
petrel dropped »to the water to dance and 
feed just as a whale rose to breathe. The 
whale shot up suddenly, and the bird, pat¬ 
tering on the sea, happened to be at the 
precise spot where the whale’s blowhole 
broke the surface. The petrel was literal- 
y blown from the nostril of the leviathan 
and was projected several feet into the air 
by the blast of steaming breath. 
r HE WILSON’S petrels exhibit more 
variety in flight than most other birds 
of their family. Their wings, though 
ong for such small creatures, are propor- 
ionately broad when compared with those 
if larger species. During calm weather 
he strokes are often deliberate and even, 
especially when the birds are coursing 
straightaway without stopping to feed. 
When they rise high in a brisk wind, the 
flight is erratic and bat-like; but their 
normal peregrinations are carried on with 
alternate flutterings and glidings that are 
highly characteristic. When these birds 
perceive food in the water, they drop and 
with legs straight strike their webs upon 
the surface. Sometimes they flop down so 
impetuously that they also strike their 
breasts, but adult birds very rarely swim 
while feeding. Instead they “dance,” sup¬ 
porting themselves partlv by means of the 
impact and rebound of the feet, or b5 
“treading water,” and partly by “leaning on 
the wind” with the wings set stiffly as 
nlanes. The word petrel is said to mean 
“little Peter” in reference to their custom 
of “walking on the water,” but this expla¬ 
nation is in reality very doubtful. At any 
rate the birds do “stand” and “hop” on the 
water even though they do not “walk,” 
and in the absence of air currents sufficient 
to maintain equilibrium, thev accomplish 
the same purpose bV holding the wings 
high and beating them rapidly. In this 
attitude they progress by skipping with 
both feet together, and they pick up 
the small particles of their food pre¬ 
cisely as a sandpiper might pick up its 
food ashore. 
On South Georgia and other subantarctic 
islands, and also on parts of the Antarctic 
Continent, the Mother Carey’s chickens 
breed during our winter, laying their single 
white egg deep within crevices • of the 
rocks. By March, the end of the southern 
summer, they are ready to begin their long 
journey toward the northern oceans. When 
I left South Georgia in the evening of 
March 15, 1913, we found ourselves in the 
midst of innumerable small seabirds flock¬ 
ing over the quiet, dusky sea. Wilson’s pe¬ 
trels made up a considerable proportion of 
these birds, which fluttered all about us. 
Their indistinct forms kept flashing above 
the dim skyline, but their myriad numbers 
were revealed still more by a chorus of 
twitterings and the soft unbroken sound of 
winnowing quills. 
T HE Mother Carey’s chickens are vari¬ 
ably common in the Lower Bay of 
New York and neighboring waters 
from early May until September. Their 
presence close inshore is very irregular, 
but sometimes they can be seen from Bat¬ 
tery Park, and rarely 
they even fly some dis¬ 
tance up the Hudson 
River. Their food 
hereabouts consists of 
small fishes and crus¬ 
taceans, and any sort 
of fish refuse or fatty 
substances. They often 
folloW in the track of 
schools of predaceous 
fishes in order to profit 
by the scraps 'from a 
slaughter. 
In September of this 
year I sailed in a 
bluefish schooner out 
of what the censor 
calls “an Atlantic 
port,” and had a rare 
opportunity to renew 
acquaintance with my 
friends, the Mother 
Carey’s chickens. 
Thousands, perhaps 
tens of thousands, of 
them were to be seen 
within a few acres 
around the Ambrose 
lightship, most of them feeding m the 
slicks produced by the ground up “chum” 
of the blue-fishermen. At night, when the 
blue-fish were cleaned on the schooner’s 
deck, the unseen petrels would gather in 
twittering flocks around the vessel to feed 
upon the fish gurry” tossed overboard. 
On September 10, I was on the sea alone 
in a dory, when the northerly wind began 
to blow, so strongly that I had to drop 
anchor in thirteen fathoms of water to 
keep from being blown far to leeward of 
the schooner. Fortunately I lay in a slick 
from the fishing boats to windward, and 
the Mother Carey’s chickens passed me as 
they worked along the choppy water in the 
teeth of the wind. I sat in the bottom of 
the dory, with my eyes just over the gun¬ 
wale, and the marvelous little waifs danced 
by hundreds before me, scores of them 
coming within ten feet, many within arm’s 
length. Most prodigious little engines they 
are, and it is quite understandable that they 
require an extraordinary amount of fuel to 
furnish the energy for their never-tiring 
legs and wings. They were feeding upon 
the bits of ground menhaden drifting from 
the bluefish skiffs, and, as I followed in¬ 
dividual birds with my eye, it seemed as 
if each must have bolted half its weight 
of scraps within a few minutes. They 
swallowed such large pieces that their 
throats bulged out shockingly. It was 
hard to watch one particular bird, how¬ 
ever, because within a few moments a 
wave would hide it from view, and there 
were so many “chickens” that half a dozen 
would reappear where only one was ex¬ 
pected. They twittered continually as they 
(continued on page 676) 
A migrating Wilson’s petrel, in latitude 22° S., Atlantic Ocean, Oct. 27, 1912 
