SEA BIRDS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8952, 8 December 1890, Page 4

SEA BIRDS.

Sea birds are always interesting objects to voyagers. They follow a vessel sometimes all the way across, ever restless and untiring. The gulls particularly, with their long, swift wings, realize the highest powers of endurance, and fly with ease against the severest storms. Some say that these birds never visit the earth except to deposit their eggs ; otherwise they live constantly between the sea and the sky. In fine weather they fly high in the air, decending with great rapidity to seize the fishes on the surface of the water. The symmetry and strength of the gulls if remarkable, showing how nature has adapted them in every particular for the purpose of long flight. Their pectoral or breast muscles are one solid mass of firm, hard muscle, and their bones are hollow, having no marrow in them. Sleep is not necessary to them ; or, rather, they rest upon their wings and allow themselves to be cradled by the breezes, whose violence neither worries nor frightens them. On the other hand, they seem to feel a fierce delight in the f ury of the storm which, convulsing the waves, brings up the dead fishes and molluscs. Sailors are very fond of playing off a joke upon the gulls, which are always hovering about the ships. They take three or four pieces of sail twine, about six feet in length ; these are tied together in the middle, and to the end of each a small piece of blubber or fat is attached tightly and then thrown into the sea. A gull comes along and swallows one piece ; another then sees there is plenty to spare, and swallows the next ; perhaps a third bird takes possession of another ; but as they are all attached by the sail yarns, whenever they try to fly away one or the other is compelled to disgorge his share, and this is continued to the tantalizing suspense of the poor gulls and the great fun of the passengers and sailors.