s wing feathers are black. His wings are wonders of creation.
When he folds them, they cling close to the body and seem to disappear;
but now he has spread them out, and they measure twelve feet from tip to
tip. They are long and narrow, thin and finely formed as a sword blade.
He moves them with amazing steadiness, and excels all other birds in
strength and endurance. No bird has such an elegant and majestic flight.
He spreads his wings like sails with taut sheets, and soars at a
whistling pace up against the wind. Follow him with your eyes hour after
hour in the hardest wind, and you will see that he makes a scarcely
perceptible beat of his wings only every seventh minute, keeping them
between whiles perfectly still. That is his secret. All his skill
consists in his manner of holding his wings expanded and the inclination
he gives to his excellent monoplane in relation to his body and the
wind. Everything else, change of elevation, and movement forwards with
or against the wind, is managed by the wind itself. When he wishes to
rise from the surface of the sea he spreads his wings, turns towards the
wind, and lets it lift him up. Then he soars in elegant curves and
glides up the invisible hills of the atmosphere.

Most noteworthy is the perfect freedom of the albatross. He shuns the
mainland and breeds on solitary islands; he can scarcely move on the
ground, and when he is forced to alight he waddles clumsily along like a
swan. He comes in contact with the earth only at the nest, where the hen
sits on her single egg and tucks her white head under her wing.
Otherwise he does not touch the ground. He finds his food on the surface
of the sea, and spends three-fourths of his life in the air. There he
soars about from sea to sea like a satellite to the earth, moving freely
and lightly round the heavy globe as it rolls through space.

He is not restricted to any particular course, no distance is too great
for him; he simply rests on his wings and sweeps easily from ocean to
ocean. He is, however, rarer in the Atlantic than in the Pacific Ocean,
and he avoids the heat of equatorial regions. He sails in any other
direction he pleases, where he has most prospect of satisfying his
voracious appetite.

What do you think of an albatross which was caught on a vessel and
marked so that it might be recognised again, and which then followed the
vessel for six days and nights watching for any refuse thrown out? The
ship was in the op