Volume 2

The feathered tribes of the British Islands / By Robert Mudie.

  • Mudie, Robert, 1777-1842.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The feathered tribes of the British Islands / By Robert Mudie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    able, and many of the remains are preserved in the snow and ice, both at sea and on the land. These are loosened by the heat in spring; and the land portion is, in a great measure, brought down by the “ freshes so that the sea becomes the common receptacle of the whole. The fatty part of these remains, especially, floats southward with the surface water, and meets the Pelagic birds as they collect northward to their breeding places. Nor is the fatty or oily matter the only food for birds which then floats with the motion of the sea ; for the fulmars, the gulls, and a variety of other birds—all the scavengers of the sea, indeed—then find an abundance; and as the supply continues all the time that the ice and snow are melting, which is nearly till they again begin to freeze, the birds find a continued supply for themselves and their young during the whole of the breeding season. The spring thaw is, in fact, the surface harvest of the polar sea, just as the rains of autumn and early winter are the harvest of our estuaries, to which the birds resort, while the frost is sealing up and preserving a store for them against the breeding time. The general current produced in the Atlantic by the tides, has, no doubt, some effect upon the distribution of the surface water, and consequently upon that of the skimming birds ; but it will generally be found that they nestle where the land stands out to meet the current;—where the clifib are bold and high, and the water deep, circumstances which usually ac¬ company each other, and which thus have some relation to each other: but whether that be a relation of co-existence or of cause and effect, there are no complete data for determin¬ ing, though probability is in favour of that of cause and efiect, inasmuch as the sea assails the bold shores, and casts the debris upon the low and flat ones, where the water, from the shelve, has little force, and the sea wind passes inland with¬ out opposition. The natural history of even the surface of the sea is, how¬ ever, but little known. The effect of seasons and tides, that of the variations of atmospheric pressure, of heat and light, 7