. Birds the world over, as shown in habitat groups in Chicago Natural History Museum. Birds. criterion. Part of each year albatrosses spend all their time at sea, skimming the ocean in magnificent soaring flight or resting on it. At mating time they throng to a few tiny oceanic islands, as at Laysan. The dance of the Laysan albatross, illustrated by the two birds standing breast to breast in the center of the group with their bills pointed skyward, is a remarkable per- formance, probably connected with courtship originally, though now it almost seems to be a pastime. "From a point of vant
. Birds the world over, as shown in habitat groups in Chicago Natural History Museum. Birds. criterion. Part of each year albatrosses spend all their time at sea, skimming the ocean in magnificent soaring flight or resting on it. At mating time they throng to a few tiny oceanic islands, as at Laysan. The dance of the Laysan albatross, illustrated by the two birds standing breast to breast in the center of the group with their bills pointed skyward, is a remarkable per- formance, probably connected with courtship originally, though now it almost seems to be a pastime. "From a point of vantage, an observer may often see 25 or 30 couples all engaged in this performance at ; Fisher described the dance in part as follows: "Two albatrosses approach each other nodding solemnly all the time. Next they fence a little, crossing bills and whetting them together, pecking meanwhile, and dropping stiff little bows. Sometimes both birds raise their heads in the air and either one or both utter the indescribable and ridiculous ; The sooty albatross has a modified form of the dance. Relatives of the albatrosses are the petrels and shearwaters, which when not breed- ing are also birds of the open ocean, spending all their time at sea. It is interesting to note the stratification of the birds, even in a place with such scanty vegetation: the frigate bird nest is on the shrubbery; the albatrosses, boobies, and tropic birds are among those that nest on the ground; and a petrel lays its egg [50]. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Chicago Natural History Museum; Rand, Austin Loomer, 1905-1982; Blake, Emmet Reid, 1908-. [Chicago]
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Photo credit: © Library Book Collection / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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Keywords: ., bookauth, bookcentury1900, bookpublisherchicago, booksubjectbirds
