Home › Volumes › Game Birds
Shearwaters and Petrels
"Mother Carey's Chickens" may be distinguished by their small size, slight, elegant form, and graceful, airy, flickering flight, as contrasted with the strong, swift flying of the larger shearwaters that often sail with no visible motion of the pinions. Birds of the open sea, feeding on animal substances, particularly the fatty ones, they may sometimes be noticed in flocks, picking up the refuse thrown overboard from the ship's kitchen, on the ocean highway, like the more common herring gull. They seem to be ever on the wing, though their webbed feet indicate that they must be good swimmers when they choose. Hardly any birds are less known than all these ocean roamers and their kin that come to land only to nest. The nest and eggs of the common shearwater, that wanders over the whole Atlantic from Greenland to Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, that sailors often see in flocks of thousands, have yet to be discovered. Petrels burrow holes in the ground like bank swallows.
