Storm petrel

“ Several species of these birds are found on the coasts of the United States. The most abundant and best known is Wilson’s Storm Petrel (Thalassidroma Wilsonii) , a bird which is perhaps to be regarded as more nearly cosmopolite than any other, so extensive are its wanderings over the surface of the ocean. It is of common occurrence throughout the whole extent of the eastern shores of the continent of America, and it has been repeatedly noticed and captured at various points on the coasts of Europe and Africa, thus demonstrating a range over nearly the entire Atlantic Ocean. ”

“ Collector, A. W. Anthony.
1 0-1. STORM PETREL. Thalassidroma pelagica.
North Atlantic Ocean chiefly on the European side, wintering south to New Brunswick. Smallest of the white rumped, black petrels; 5.75 inches in length. ”

“ The sailors regard these birds with much superstitious fear, because they appear in greatest numbers just before a storm, and are besides very singular in their habits; but the petrels are really very inoffensive birds, and have no more to do with getting up a tempest than our ducks, geese, swallows, snow-birds, and other land birds, which are uncommonly noisy and busy just before a storm. Tom, however, like most sailors, believed the traditions concerning the petrel, and when he told Jerry they were messengers of the evil one, they lost none of their interest in the eyes of the young sailor. ”

“ Not so harmless is the stormy petrel, whose advent is looked upon by sailors as a sure sign of an impending storm, accompanied by much loss of life.
The vulture and eagle, obviously on account of their ferocious dispositions, often remain earth-bound after death, and usually select as their haunts, spots little frequented by man. From what I have heard they are by far the most malignant of all bird ghosts, and have even been known to inflict physical injury on those who have had the misfortune to pass the night within their allotted precincts. ”

“ On the following day, as we lay all but becalmed, the storm petrels (Thalassidroma pelagica) appeared in great numbers, settling [14] on the water close to our stern, in flocks of twelve or fourteen, and feeding greedily on the rubbish thrown overboard. It seems that the natural food of these birds (which probably consists of the minute surface organisms) is not within their reach when the surface of the water is unbroken, and hence during calms they are more than commonly anxious to avail themselves of any offal thrown overboard. ”

“ Knowing that danger and death face them if they once come under the dominion of the wind, they use all the strength and tactics they are capable of to combat the elements. A young Herring Gull, a Petrel, or a Tern thus surprised will beat up against the wind with powerful flight. It will rise high in the air, facing the gale, and making a little progress forward as well as upward. Then it will suddenly descend with rapid flight toward one side of the storm-swept path, but falling off at the same time in the direction of the blowing wind. ”

“ Bobby’s mamma told him many things about the stormy petrel. She told him how the stormy petrel flies far, far away from land. His home is on the sea. He can fly all day long and not be tired.
The stormy petrel hardly ever goes on land except to lay her eggs. Her nest is in a hole in some high cliff by the sea. She hatches one little bird. It looks like a ball of fluff. The nest smells very oily.
The stormy petrel is very oily, like all sea birds. He is so full of oil that the people of the Faroe Islands sometimes use him for a lamp. They take a dead petrel and run a wick through him. ”

“ General plumage like the last; tail even at the extremity; legs moderate; membranes black. Length scarcely six inches. Eggs white.
Under the name of 'Mother Carey's Chickens' the Petrels must be known to all readers of voyages. According to the belief popular in the forecastle, these birds are invisible during calm or bright weather; but when the sky lowers, and a storm is impending, suddenly, no one knows whence, forth come these ill-omened heralds of the tempest, inspiring more terror than would be caused even by the hurricane which they are supposed to commence. ”

“ Some of them were petrels; they remained a long time skimming about the ship, and though they greedily devoured any fat substance thrown into the sea, all our endeavours to procure one failed. One species was the stormy petrel, which they say is seen all over the Atlantic Ocean. Some chopped straw being thrown overboard, we saw{5} them stand on it with expanded wings; but these birds never settle or swim in the water. They skim along with incredible rapidity in the hollows of the waves. It is to the stormy petrel that these two lines allude ”

“ Then, as the breeze freshened to a gale, the petrels darted about, playing round and round the scudding ship, at home on the wings of the storm, poising themselves upon the wind as instinctively and with as little effort as a man balances himself on his feet. ”

“ One night, when Francis Probart and Ned Carlton were on watch, a sound like the distant report of a pistol was heard by them, and at the same instant, both saw a flock of petrels and storm-finches rise up in the moonlight from the face of a bluff, where they revolved above the breakers, like a swarm of gnats in a sunbeam. ”

“ It was a splendid sight to watch the birds sailing in the high winds of Adelie Land. In winds of fifty to seventy miles per hour, when with good crampons one had to stagger warily along the ice-foot, the snow petrels and Antarctic petrels were in their element. Wheeling, swinging, sinking, planing and soaring, they were radiant with life—the wild spirits of the tempest. Even in moderate drift, when through swirling snow the vistas of sea whitened under the flail of the wind, one suddenly caught the silver flash of wings and a snow petrel glided past. ”

“ If it were, every strong breeze from the ocean towards the land would bring an inundation; navigation would be impossible, and the banks of rivers and seas would be uninhabitable. The adhesion of the particles of water to each other is the cause of its preservation in masses; it would otherwise evaporate like æther, or be dispersed like dust. Such is the simplicity employed by Nature in all her works.”
8th.—We have twice seen the stormy petrel, but as yet it has not been the forerunner of storms;—it is black, with a very little white near the tail. ”

“ Notwithstanding the coldness of this climate, our sloops were still surrounded by birds of the petrel genus, albatrosses and pinguins. We particularly observed a petrel, about the size of a pigeon, entirely white, with a black bill and blueish feet; it constantly appeared about the icy masses, and may be looked upon as a sure fore-runner of ice. Its colour induced us to call it the snowy-petrel. A grampus and several whales likewise made their appearance among the ice, and in these chilling regions served to vary the dismal scene, and gave us some idea of a southern Greenland. ”

“ For the food of petrels, strange to say, is oil. At any rate, nothing else is found in their stomachs, but where the oil comes from—whether they collect it from the surface of the sea, or whether by some chemical process of their own they convert other material into oil—no one can say with certainty.
Oddly enough, too, the little stormy-petrel in its breeding haunts does not fly by day, but feeds its young at night; and here, again, reason is puzzled for an explanation. They lay their eggs in crevices of the rocks, in heaps of débris, or old rabbit-holes ”

“ Hoadley, on his first visit to the island, had seen Antarctic petrels flying about, and a search revealed a large rookery of these on the eastern side. The nesting-place of this species of petrel had never before been discovered, and so we were all elated at the great find. About three hundred birds were found sitting in the gullies and clefts, as close together as they could crowd. They made no attempt to form nests, merely laying their eggs on the shallow dirt. Each bird had one egg about the same size as that of a domestic fowl. ”

“ There are many known breeding-places of this Petrel from the Scilly Islands northwards, along the west coast of England, Wales, and Scotland to the Shetlands, and many others round the coasts of Ireland. The favourite breeding haunts of the Stormy Petrel are rocky islands, rising in uneven turf-clad downs, strewn with masses of rock and stones. The bird probably pairs for life, and is more or less gregarious at its breeding-places. The slight nest of dry grass is placed in an old rabbit earth or Puffin burrow, under a rock or heap of loose stones, or in ruins, and amongst masonry. ”

“ The names of stormy petrel and Mother Carey’s chicken are as familiar to everyone as that of rook, or partridge, or hedge-sparrow; but the little bird they belong to is known by sight to comparatively few persons. It is pre-eminently an oceanic species, that comes to land only to breed; its breeding-places are on remote and lonely islands not easy of access; and, when breeding, the bird is nocturnal in habits, and it would be possible for anyone to spend many days in the very midst of a colony of petrels and not see them, or suspect that they were there. ”

“ While the petrels do not "carry their eggs under their wings and hatch them while resting on the sea," as seafaring men affirmed, yet their domestic life seems to be curtailed as much as possible. They nest in cavities in rocks along the coast or in burrows in the ground, laying a single white egg. This species is said to breed in Florida and the West India islands.
The petrel belongs to the wild wastes of the sea, as the gull belongs to the shore, and the swallow to inland districts. Sea birds are as completely helpless when driven far inland as the Fig. ”

“ Curiously enough there are no records made of movements at Isle of May; but at Pentland Skerries, and again at Fidra, very full notice is taken. No records in November. Only one in December at Pentland Skerries.
Procellariidæ.—Petrels, Stormy Petrel.—The Stormy Petrels often appear at lanterns at night in midsummer, but this is in all probability merely a local movement. Being nocturnal in their habits, and abroad only at night, certain lighthouses lure them to their light more readily than others, owing to proximity to breeding stations or lines of flight to and from their feeding grounds. ”

“ Flinders' observations upon the sooty petrels, or mutton birds, seen at the Furneaux Islands, are valuable as forming a very early account of one of the most remarkable sea-birds in the world:
"The sooty petrel, better known to us under the name of sheerwater, frequents the tufted grassy parts of all the islands in astonishing numbers. It is known that these birds make burrows in the ground like rabbits; that they lay one or two enormous eggs in the holes and bring up their young there. ”

“ His life, very full of promise, was ahead of him, and hers seemed wrecked, finished. I wondered if it were possible for one who had been such a rebellious soul, such a stormy petrel swirling above the muddy, bloodstained maelstrom of Russian waters, to become helpmate to any man. And then came the recollection that even the stormy petrel when its wings are worn and tired, is eventually driven to rest. ”

“ It is odd that some species of the family of petrels should find such difficulty about rising on the wing from a ship's deck. A freshly-caught Cape pigeon, placed on its legs on the deck, seems to forget utterly that it possesses the power of flight, and does not even attempt to use its wings, [106] but waddles about like an old farmyard duck. The petrel above referred to was the little diver (Pelecanoides urinatrix) , a bird not uncommon in the channels, but yet very difficult to obtain. ”

“ The Petrel builds its nest, a rude structure of weeds and rubbish, either in the hole of a cliff or under stones on the beach, and lays a single egg. It rarely comes abroad by day, and if disturbed ejects from its mouth an oily matter, after the manner of the Fulmar. Towards evening it comes forth from its stronghold, and skims the sea in quest of food, which consists of floating animal matter of all kinds. ”

“ Then there was a violent gush of wind—cold; smelling of the forests from which it came; scattering everything before it, dust, dead leaves, the fallen petals of flowers; making the trees writhe and labour, like giants wrestling with invisible giants; making the short grass shudder; corrugating the steel surface of the lake. Then two or three big raindrops fell—and then, the deluge.
Peter climbed up to his observatory—a square four-windowed turret, at the top of the house—thence to watch the storm and exult in it. ”

“ Once when his hand strayed down the long muzzle, the animal gave a terrified start and snort at the dreaded man smell so violently invading its nostrils. But Pete kept on soothingly and firmly; and again the beast grew calm. At length Pete decided that his best place for the night, or until the storm should lift, would be by the warmth of this imprisoned and peaceable animal. Digging down into the snow beyond the clutches of the wind, he rolled himself in his blankets, crouched close against the caribou’s flank, and went confidently to sleep. ”

“ It does not dig its own holes under the rocks. Usually it shares the burrow of a black-and-white petrel—known in New Zealand as the mutton-bird—and it remains there even when the bird incubates its eggs and feeds its nestlings. Apparently a mutually satisfactory arrangement has been reached between petrel and lizard. The former usually are in their nests only at night. The tuatera spends most of the night away from home, hunting for the insects which are its favorite food. ”