These I saw often enough, and heard them yelping night and day.

Birds were not plentiful.

The scream of a wild fowl, which I took for a loon, sometimes startled me with its piercing cry.

The steamboat duck, so called because it propels itself over the sea with its wings, and resembles a miniature side-wheel steamer in its motion, was sometimes seen scurrying on out of danger.

It never flies, but, hitting the water instead of the air with its wings, it moves faster than a rowboat or a canoe.