Some were almost as big as geese, of a grey colour, with white breasts, and with such bills, wings, and tails.  Some were pintado-birds, as big as ducks, and speckled black and white.  Some were shearwaters; some petrels; and there were several sorts of large fowls.  We saw of these birds, especially pintado-birds, all the sea over from about 200 leagues distant from the coast of Brazil to within much the same distance of New Holland.  The pintado is a southern bird, and of that temperate zone; for I never saw of them much to the northward of 30 degrees south.  The pintado-bird is as big as a duck; but appears, as it flies, about the bigness of a tame pigeon, having a short tail, but the wings very long, as most sea-fowls have; especially such as these that fly far from the shore, and seldom come nigh it; for their resting is sitting afloat upon the water; but they lay, I suppose, ashore.  There are three sorts of these birds, all of the same make and bigness, and are only different in colour.  The first is black all over:  the second sort are grey, with white bellies and breasts.  The third sort, which is the true pintado, or painted-bird, is curiously spotted white and black.  Their heads and the tips of their wings and tails are black for about an inch; and their wings are also edged quite round with such a small black list; only within the black on the tip of their wings there is a white spot seeming as they fly (for then their spots are best seen) as big as a half-crown.  All this is on the outside of the tails and wings; and, as there is a white spot in the black tip of the wings, so there is in the middle of the wings which is white, a black spot; but this, towards the back of the bird, turns gradually to a dark grey.  The back itself, from the head to the tip of the tail, and the edge of the wings next to the back, are all over spotted with fine small, round, white and black spots, as big as a silver twopence, and as close as they can stick one by another:  the belly, thighs, sides, and inner part of the wings, are of a light grey.  These birds, of all these sorts, fly many together, never high, but almost sweeping the water.  We shot one a while after on the water in a calm, and a water-spaniel we had with us brought it in:  I have given a picture of it, but it was so damaged that the picture doth not show it to advantage; and its spots are best seen when the feathers are spread as it flies.

The petrel is a bird not much unlike a swallow, but smaller, and with a shorter tail.  It is all over black, except a white spot on the rump.  They fly sweeping like swallows, and very near the water.  They are not so often seen in fair weather; being foul-weather birds, as our seamen call them, and presaging a storm when they come about a ship; who for that reason don’t love to see them.  In a storm they will hover close under the ship’s stern in the wake of the ship (as it is called) or the smoothness which the ship’s passing has made on the sea; and there as they fly (gently then) they pat the water alternately with their feet as if they walked upon it; though still upon the wing.  And from hence the seamen give them the name of petrels in allusion to St. Peter’s walking upon the Lake of Gennesareth.