When they weren’t mining the wreck, they went on excursions. Byron made a study of the seabirds that he saw, including the steamer duck, which had short wings and big webbed feet, and made a snoring sound when it cleaned its feathers at night. He considered this duck an avian equivalent of a racehorse, because of “the velocity with which it moved across the surface of the water, in a sort of half flying, half running motion.”
