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Updated: April 30, 2025
The Ichthyornis type was a tern-like flying bird, with socketed teeth and biconcave vertebrae like the reptile, but otherwise fully evolved into a bird. Its line is believed to survive in the gannets, cormorants, pelicans, and frigate-birds of to-day. The less numerous Hesperornis group were large and powerful divers.
Hence it will cause him no surprise that there should be geese and frigate-birds with webbed feet, living on the dry land and rarely alighting on the water, that there should be long-toed corncrakes, living in meadows instead of in swamps; that there should be woodpeckers where hardly a tree grows; that there should be diving thrushes and diving Hymenoptera, and petrels with the habits of auks.
The eggs of the latter were laid on the ground, without any nest; and so faithful were the hens to their trust, that they allowed themselves to be captured rather than desert them. The most remarkable and beautiful of those we saw, however, were the frigate-birds, whose nests, constructed of a few sticks, were seen in all the surrounding trees.
Shoals of porpoises, albacores, bonitos, and other gregarious fishes will appear in the same place, each kind in pursuit of its favourite prey, while sharks, threshers, and sword-fish, accompanied by their "pilots" and "suckers," though in lesser numbers, here also abound, from the very abundance of the species on which these sea-monsters subsist "Flocks" of flying-fish sparkle in the sun with troops of bonitos gliding watchful below, while above them the sky will sometimes be literally clouded with predatory birds, gulls, boobies, gannets, tropic and frigate-birds, albatrosses, and a score of other kinds but little known, and as yet undescribed by the naturalist.
That evening Ali, Dick Tarbox, and I, went out to fish in our boat in the line of cliffs near which my uncle had shot the frigate-birds. First, however, we pulled out some way, and laid down our fish-pots at a spot where Ali seemed to think it was possible we might capture one of the much-wished-for nautili.
From the shell-reefs of Pointe-au-Fer to the shallows of Pelto Bay the dead lie mingled with the high-heaped drift; from their cypress groves the vultures rise to dispute a share of the feast with the shrieking frigate-birds and squeaking gulls.
Even to the distance of fifteen hundred miles and more from the mouth of the Amazon, large flocks of the high-flying frigate-birds are descried hovering at an immense height above the stream, preparing to plunge down and seize their finny prey. They measure seven feet from wing to wing, and appear almost to live in the air.
Formed of brown granite, with a speck of white sandy beach, and rising into hills covered with the noblest timber, wreathed with gigantic creepers. Cream-colored pigeons flit from tree to tree, and an eagle or two soared aloft watching their motions. Frigate-birds are numerous; and several sorts of smaller birds in the bush, difficult to get at.
Hence it will cause him no surprise that there should be geese and frigate-birds with webbed feet, either living on the dry land or most rarely alighting on the water; that there should be long-toed corncrakes living in meadows instead of in swamps; that there should be woodpeckers where not a tree grows; that there should be diving thrushes, and petrels with the habits of auks.
The frigate-birds, disappointed of their prey, had flown off, but were hovering overhead ready to seize the entrails as they were thrown overboard. The fish hauled up on the raft was about ten feet long, of a bluish-black above, and silvery white below, the skin being somewhat rough.
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