Still all their roving is done chiefly by swimming, and they leave it to the Gulls and Petrels, the Terns and the powerful Cormorants and Gannets, to fly hither and thither over the wide sea. These birds have indeed reached the climax of a seafaring life, with their powerful wings, their sharp and often hooked beaks, and their short legs. They, too, feed upon the water, coming up with a fish in their mouth, but they do not dive under and swim like the guillemots. On the contrary, flying is their forte; they swoop down, and scarcely have they gone a few feet under water than they are up again, skimming on the waves as they swallow their prey, which may be anything from dead floating creatures to living fish which have ventured too near the surface. Yet they swim well too, and though the common gulls rarely go more than twenty miles from the shore, they are quite at home on the open ocean, and there is no habitable part of the globe without them. Still more venturesome are the petrels:-- “Up and down, up and down, From the base of the wave to the billow’s crown, And amidst the flashing and feathery foam The stormy petrel finds a home.” They are smaller and lighter than the common gulls, and are never so happy as when darting over the foam of an angry sea, while their more delicate relations, the Terns or sea-swallows, with their long pointed wings and forked tails, are taking shelter in the quiet bays. Lastly, king among all sea-flying birds is the gigantic petrel, the Albatross. What a grand fellow he is when he is once on the wing, though he has some difficulty in starting. Flying onward, onward, without resting day or night, his pure white body near down to the water, his large head and short thick neck slightly bent, and his long, narrow, black wings, often measuring ten feet from tip to tip, widely outspread, he beats a few powerful strokes, and then sails along, using his head and tail as rudders to turn his wings to the wind. Often he will follow a ship for days, sailing round and round in circles, and yet keeping easily ahead, while all the time his bright eye watches the water to catch every chance of food. Jelly-fish, cuttle-fish, and real fish of all kinds, together with any dead creatures he may find afloat,--all is food to him, and his powerful beak will cut through the toughest morsel. For days and days he will fly on, never tiring, and feeding as he goes; and if he alights for a time upon the water he rises with difficulty, unless the waves are high and bear him up on their crests; and when he comes to rest it is on some island in mid-ocean, where he seeks a mate, and brings up his nestlings either on the low ground or on the top of a high mountain, in a hollow lined with grass and moss. Truly, if we look at the far-flying albatross we must acknowledge that the wings of a bird have given him the command of the sea as well as the land. [Illustration: Fig. 38. Albatrosses and Penguins.]