NOTES ON THE BIRDS OF WEST ROSS-SHIRE 93 



Several of the specimens obtained here belong to the dark form, 

 while others seem to be intermediate between this and the ordinary 

 white-breasted bird. 



Notwithstanding the strong and peculiar smell of the Fulmar, it 

 appears to be rather relished than otherwise as an article of food 

 by crows and gulls : all the breast and fleshy parts of the Holy 

 Island bird, above alluded to, had been devoured, while a " Corby " 

 was disturbed in the act of picking the bones of another. 



SOOTY SHEARWATER, Puffinus griseus (J. F. Gmelin). Has been 

 obtained three or four times upon the Northumberland coast, but 

 not nearer to Berwick than the Fame Islands. It has also occurred 

 near North Berwick. 



Mr. H. A. Paynter has informed me that in the early autumn of 

 1893, and again in 1894, he saw several birds, which he took to be 

 of this species, when fishing in the vicinity of the Fame Islands ; 

 and I have had other, apparently well founded, reports of Shear- 

 waters seen upon the coast. 



MANX SHEARWATER, Puffinus anglorum (Temminck). Except 

 the specimen recorded by Selby from the Fame Islands, and figured 

 in his " Illustrations of British Ornithology," I know of no instance of 

 the capture of this bird in the district. 



STORM PETREL, Procellaria pelagica, Linnaeus. A casual 

 visitant, sometimes met with off the shore, and has occasionally 

 been picked up dead at high-water mark. One was thus found by 

 the late Mr. C. M. Adamson, on Goswick sands, on icth September 

 1876, and is the nearest record to the borough which we have. 



FORK-TAILED PETREL, Procellaria leucorrhoa, Vieillot. Another 

 casual visitant, which has occurred almost as frequently as the last- 

 named species. There is no record for the borough itself, but in 

 the district one was obtained at Branxton, in Northumberland, on 

 3rd December 1885 ; another at Fowberry Tower, on i5th October 

 1891 ; and a third near Alnwick, on 3ist of the same month. 



(To be continued?) 



NOTES ON THE BIRDS OF WEST ROSS-SHIRE. 

 BY A. H. EVANS, M.A., F.Z.S. 



THE following notes, derived chiefly from the writer's 

 personal observations in the Loch Maree district, but con- 

 taining occasional references to Mr. J. H. Dixon's more 

 complete list in his " Gairloch in North-West Ross-shire " 

 (1886), may be found of interest as supplementing those of 



