262 The Irish Naturalist. [Oct., 



out to be females, the ovaries of each containing eggs varying 

 in size from No. 8 to B shot. 



The lyONGTAii^ED or Bupfon's Skua (^Lestris parasiticzcs) 

 is of very rare occurrence on this part of the coast, and has only 

 on two occasions come under my notice — first, on the 24th of 

 October, 1862, I was on the shore near Scurmore, looking out 

 for any rare birds that might have been driven in by the gale 

 of the two previous days, when a small skua flew past, which 

 I fired at and wounded, but it escaped over the sandhills. On 

 the following day when walking along the Bnniscrone sands, 

 on the bay side of the sandhills, and nearly in the same place 

 where on the previous day I had found two fine specimens of 

 the Fulmar Petrel, I picked up a dead skua, and fancied it 

 was the bird I had fired at the day before. After I got home 

 I skinned the bird and found that it was wounded by No. 6 

 shot, the same that I had used, .so felt pretty certain that it 

 was the bird I had wounded. It proved to be an immature 

 specimen of Buffon's Skua. 



The second specimen was given to me by the late Mr. N. 

 Handy of Ballintubber, near Killala, on the 18th of October, 

 1867, who told me he met it when out grouse-shooting, and 

 shot it as it rose from the carcase of a hare, upon which it had 

 been feeding. This was also an immature bird, but as it had 

 been kept too long, I was unable to preserve it. 



The only instance that I am aware of this skua being seen 

 on its spring migration in Ireland, is that mentioned by 

 Lieutenant Crane, of the 67th Regiment, in a letter read at a 

 meeting of the late Dublin Natural History Society on the 

 7th February, 1862, in which he says : — 



"The specimens of Buffon's Skua were shot by me on the i6th of May, 

 i860, on the Shannon, about five miles south of Athlone. 



" I was out with two brother officers shooting Land-rails, which are very 

 plentiful on that part of the river. The day was very stormy, and cold 

 for the season, the wind from north-west. I was sitting in a boat at a 

 place called lyongisland, when a flock of about twenty skuas passed 

 over. I saw at once that they were not common birds : the long tail 

 feathers marked them at once ; but as I was sitting in the bow, the flock 

 had nearly passed over before I saw them, but I succeeded in killing 

 one. Sometime after another flock of about the same number 

 passed, but I could not get a shot ; but a third flock came over, out of 

 which I killed one with each barrel, making three in all. I gave two 



I 



