in the Orkney Islands. 419 



principally under the large fragments of rocks that lie scat- 

 tered about upon the island, without any appearance of a nest. 

 The eggs are considerably smaller than those of the razor- 

 bill, and about the size of those of a bantam fowl ; they are of 

 a grey colour, inclining to a light blue, marked with black and 

 brown spots, and all of them very much alike. This bird is 

 known by the name of the tyste. 



The Red-throated Diver (Qolymbus septentriondlis 1^,) goes 

 here by the name of the rain-goose, and a few pairs of them 

 annually breed on the margins of the small lochs that are to 

 be found amid the hills in the Island of Hoy. Although we 

 visited every loch in the island, we were not fortunate enough 

 to meet with its egg ; and are indebted to the son of the 

 Rev. Mr. Hamilton, who very kindly presented us with a 

 specimen that he had taken from a nest the preceding sum- 

 mer. He informed us, at the same time, that they were 

 becoming very scarce ; and although he had, at different 

 times, found their eggs, he never saw two in one nest, which 

 is always placed close to the water's edge, and composed 

 merely of a few loose rushes and dried grass that may happen 

 to be near, without any down or feathers whatever. 



The Common Tern (Sterna Hirundo L.) is very plentiful, par- 

 ticularly in the Island of Sanda ; and the birds of this species 

 deposit their eggs principally upon the bare sand, with little 

 or no nest, along the seaside. Those that we found had only 

 two eggs in each ; and I suspect that they very rarely exceed 

 that number, as we met with a boy who had always been in 

 the habit of gathering their eggs, and he said that he never 

 found more than two in one nest. 



The Herring Gull (Ldrus Juscus L.) and the Lesser black- 

 backed Gull or Sihery Gull (Ldrus argentdtus Brunnich), I am 

 inclined to think, are one and the same; for on the small 

 holm lying to the eastward of Papa Westra we found both in 

 abundance, and in some hundred nests that we examined, we 

 could not perceive any very great difference between the eggs 

 of either, as to size or colour. Every nest contained three 

 eggs, and not /wo, as stated in Rennie's Montagu's Ornitho- 

 logical Dictionary (p. 254?.). This statement, I suspect, relates 

 rather to the nest and eggs of the common gull (Z^arus canus) 

 which only lays two ; at least, I never saw more. In one nest 

 we found all three of the eggs of a light blue colour with 

 black blotches ; but, with a few other exceptions, all the eggs 

 were invariably of a dark olive brown, spotted and marked 

 with black and brown blotches. The young are called scauries, 

 and there were already (June 11.) a great number of them 

 hatched. We found several hundreds of these gulls, in 



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