They, in
consonance with the general habits of the species, were wont to lay their
eggs carelessly on the sand or shingle, without pretence of nests. A
meat-loving pioneer introduced goats to the island, the continual
parading about of which so disturbed the birds, and deprived them of
their hope of posterity, that they took to the building of nests on dwarf
trees, out of the way of the goats. That birds unaccustomed to the
building of nests should acquire the habit, illustrates the depths of
Nature's promptings for the preservation of species; or is it that the
faculty existed as an hereditary trait, was abandoned only when its
exercise was unnecessary, and resumed when there was conspicuous occasion
for it? On a neighbouring island of the same group unstocked with goats,
no change in the habits of the birds has taken place.
Among the rocks of Purtaboi, in cool dark grottoes, the brown-winged tern
rears her young. She often permits herself to be trapped rather than
indicate her presence by voluntary flight. One of the most graceful of
the sea-swallows this. Brown of back and greenish-white under surface;
noisy, too, for it "yaps" as a terrier whensoever intruders approach the
island during the brooding season; and its puff-ball chicken, crouching
in dim recesses, takes the bluish-grey hue of the rock.
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