Fig. 37.
A Group of Sea-Birds.
1. Cormorant. 2. Black-winged Tern. 3. Gulls. 4. Puffins. 5. Guillemots.
Still all their roving is done chiefly by swimming, and they leave it to the Gulls and Petrels, the Terns and the powerful Cormorants and Gannets, to fly hither and thither over the wide sea. These birds have indeed reached the climax of a seafaring life, with their powerful wings, their sharp and often hooked beaks, and their short legs. They, too, feed upon the water, coming up with a fish in their mouth, but they do not dive under and swim like the guillemots. On the contrary, flying is their forte; they swoop down, and scarcely have they gone a few feet under water than they are up again, skimming on the waves as they swallow their prey, which may be anything from dead floating creatures to living fish which have ventured too near the surface. Yet they swim well too, and though the common gulls rarely go more than twenty miles from the shore, they are quite at home on the open ocean, and there is no habitable part of the globe without them. Still more venturesome are the petrels:—
“Up and down, up and down,
From the base of the wave to the billow’s crown,
And amidst the flashing and feathery foam
The stormy petrel finds a home.”
They are smaller and lighter than the common gulls, and are never so happy as when darting over the foam of an angry sea, while their more delicate relations, the Terns or sea-swallows, with their long pointed wings and forked tails, are taking shelter in the quiet bays.