Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/514

488 vigorously with their formidable bills in defence of their home. The young also show fight; in fact, the species is peculiarly fierce and untameable. Three young ones 1 kept alive for about two months maintained their savage nature till the last, refusing to feed themselves, striking viciously at anyone who approached them, and even at one another. Their flight is peculiar, but graceful, and they never seem tired of their perpetual wheeling and manouvring. They take beautiful headers, like a Tern or Gannet, in pursuit of small fish. It is rare to meet with a specimen possessing two good long central tail-feathers; one is generally smaller and shorter than the other. Some of these feathers are of a lovely orange-pink. They get rubbed off during incubation, and may be picked up near the breeding-places. Two broods are reared, fresh eggs being found as early as the 10th April, and again at the end of June: there are intermediate examples, probably laid by birds whose first nests have been visited by the spoiler. That these birds revisit their breeding-stations year after year is, I think, clearly shown by the following circumstance:—Mr. Bartram, by way of experiment, slit the two webs of one foot, and cut off one or two claws, of a young bird in a nest near his house. Next year this bird turned up again, and made its nest close to the same spot. This attachment to the family residence is, I fancy, far from unusual with migratory birds. Swallows and other familiar visitors to England are known to possess it in a marked degree. On a calm day the bright greenish blue tint of the Atlantic waters, as they gently rise and fall above the white sands below, is reflected on the glossy white breasts and under parts of the Tropic-birds in a most remarkable manner as they cruise about, at no great height, along the shores or among the islands. During the breeding season the parent birds "off duty" are to be seen in the neighbourhood of their nesting-places all the morning till about noon, when the greater part disappear in a rather mysterious manner. I came to the conclusion that they proceed to a considerable distance out to sea, returning at dusk, and this opinion was much strengthened by seeing two old birds sitting on the water one afternoon, at least one hundred miles from the Bermuda shores. This was during a voyage from Bermuda to New York, on the 7th August, 1874, when the second "young hopeful" had probably left, or was about to leave, the nest, and therefore does not prove much; but it shows that these strong-winged birds, who would