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The Manx Shearwater

The Manx Shearwater image
Parent Issue
Day
13
Month
December
Year
1895
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

We have still within the limits of the British isles a few colouies remaining of a sinaĆ¼ cousiu of "the largest of sea fowles" - a typicai represeutative of tho great oceanic family of the TubiDarides - the Manx shearwater. Driven froni the island froin which it takes it name; where once it bred in enoraious nnmbers, the shearwater stil] congregates during the breeding season by thousands in Eigg, and in smaller nurnbers in' others of the western islands of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and has' a home on one, and oue only, of the Soilly isles, within a nile or two of the reefs of evil repute arnong whicb Queen Anne's fleet on its return from Spain, confused by continuous fogs, and believing itself far to the south off the French coast, found itself entangled with fatal resulta on the night of the 23d of October, 1707. The chief part of the island is covered with thrift, which has grown on the dust of its ancestors until it has formed a light, spongy peat of its own, extend iug in places to several feet in depth, honeycombed, more part.icularly at tho eastern end, with burrows. On landing - though black backed and herring gulls are in plenty, and the seaside rocks are dotted with pufflns and 8hags - there is nothing to be seen which could 6uggest to an explorer unwarned that he stands in the chief English brceding place of the most powerful and graceful on the wing, and - excepting perhaps its own smaller uear relative, the stormy petrei - the most poetical in association of European birds. The shearwater during the nesting season is nocturnal in its habits, leaving the nest, if at all, only after sunset,

Article

Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News