lOfi EDWARD A. WILSON. 



PRION BANKS I. 



The Whale Bird. 



Prwii bankni, GouW, Ann. and Mag. Kat. Hist., XIII. (1844), p. 3GC ; Sharpe, Rep. ' Southern Cross ' Coll. 

 (1902), p. 159, ibique ritata ; Eagle Clarke, Birds of S. Orkney Islands, Ibis, Jan., 1906, p. 177. 



Material in the ■ Discoveky's ' Collection. 



No. 130, ad. sk., 9 . Nov. 16, 1901. Icepack. 61° 46' S. 141° 12' E. 

 No. 122, imm. sk.. March 18, 1904. Auckland Isles. Laurie Harbour. 

 No. 121, ad. sk., ^ . March 18, 1904. Auckland Isles. Laurie Harbour. 

 The colouring of the soft parts is as follows : — 



Upper bill, pale cobalt blue, the nostrils and culmen being black, but the tip pale blue. 



No yellow nail. 

 Lower bill, pale blue, save for a narrow black line along the centre of each ramus, which 

 begins at the base of the bill but stops short of the tip and spreads into a T at the 

 junction of the terminal and the lateral portions of the beak. 

 Iris, dark brown. 

 Legs and toes, pale cobalt blue. 



Webs, fleshy grey, almost pink, terminal border greyer. 

 Nails, blackish. 



Material in the ' Morning's ' Collection. 

 M 1, ad. sk., (? . Nov. 25, 1902. 67° S., 179° E. 



We found it impossible to distinguish with any certainty the various species of 

 Prion upon the wing. It is, therefore, beside the point to give a more detailed account 

 than the above of what we saw, and the following remarks apply only to the birds 

 which we actually obtained. One was procured in the ice pack (61° 46' S. 141° 12' E.) 

 in November. There was a considerable number around us at the time, but we were 

 beset with ice too heavy for the easy management of a boat, and yet too loose to do 

 without one, and it was exceedingly difficult, owing to the rapid drift of the ice, to 

 pick up the birds we shot. We next obtained a decaying specimen of this petrel in 

 a water-ljutt at one of the sealers' huts in the Macquarie Islands. In the Auckland 

 Islands they had been breeding, and we obtained an adult which flew to a lantern on 

 shore at night, and also a fledgling which could not yet fly, close to some burrows in a 

 bank of tussac grass, where presumably it had been reared. We searched many burrows, 

 but all were empty, and beyond this proof of its nesting there, we are uncertain as to 

 whether we were examining the burrows of this or of some other species of petrel. 

 The fledgling was taken on March 18th, 1904. 



In September, 1901, we had huncbeds of Whale birds in our wake (36° S. 5° W.), 

 and we kept them with us throughout September, October, and November, in the South 

 Atlantic and Southern Indian Oceans, even to the ice. 



On several occasions soon after leaving Cape Town for New Zealand large flocks 

 passed us, moving to the west and south-west, evidently on some business bent. It 

 is noticeable that this bird, as seen from the ship, may in some lights completely 



