After one has made the acquaintance of most of the land-birds, there remain the seashore and its treasures. How little one knows of the aquatic fowls, even after reading carefully the best authorities, was recently forced home to my mind by the following circumstance: I was spending a vacation in the interior of New York, when one day a stranger alighted before the house, and with a cigar box in his hand approached me as I sat in the doorway. I was about to say that he would waste his time in recommending his cigars to me, as I never smoked, when he said that, hearing I knew something about birds, he had brought me one which had been picked up a few hours before in a hay-field near the village, and which was stranger to all who had seen it. As he began to undo the box I expected to see some of our own rarer birds, perhaps the rose-breasted grosbeak or Bohemian chatterer. Imagine, then, how I was taken aback when I beheld instead a swallow-shaped bird, quite as large as a pigeon, with a forked tail, glossy black above and snow-white beneath. Its parti-webbed feet, and its long graceful wings, at a glance told that it was a sea-bird; but as to its name or habitat I must defer my answer till I could get a peep into Audubon or some collection.
The bird had fallen down exhausted in a meadow, and was picked up just as the life was leaving its body. The place must have been one hundred and fifty miles from the sea as the bird flies. As it was the sooty tern, which inhabits the Florida Keys, its appearance so far north and so far inland may be considered somewhat remarkable. On removing the skin I found it terribly emaciated. It had no doubt starved to death, ruined by too much wing. Another Icarus. Its great power of flight had made it bold and venturesome, and had carried it so far out of its range that it starved to death before it could return.
The sooty tern is sometimes called the sea-swallow on account of its form and the power of flight. It will fly nearly all day at sea, picking up food from the surface of the water. There are several species of terns, some of them strikingly beautiful.
1868.
INDEX
[Transcribist's note: condensed to bird names and their scientific names]
Blackbird, crow, or purple grackle (Quiscalus quiscula).
Bluebird (Sialia sialis).
Bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus).
Bunting, black-throated or dickcissel (Spiza americana).
Bunting, snow (Passerina nivalis).
Buzzard, turkey, or turkey vulture (Cathartes aura).
Cardinal. SEE Grosbeak, cardinal.
Catbird (Galeoscoptes carolinensis).
Cedar-bird, or Cedar waxwing (Ampelis cedrorum).
Chat, yellow-breasted (Icteria virens).
Chewink, or towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus).
Chickadee (Parus atricapillus).
Cow-bunting, or cowbird (Molothrus ater).
Creeper, brown (Certhia familiaris americana).
Crow, American (Corvus brachyrhynchos).
Cuckoo, black-billed (Coccyzux erythrophthalmus).
Cuckoo, European.
Cuckoo, yellow-billed (Coccyzus americanus).
Dickcissel. SEE Bunting, black-throated.
Dove, turtle, or mourning dove (Zenaidura macroura).
Duck, wood (Aix sponsa).