768 BULLETIN 50, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



CICERONIA PUSILLA (Pallas). 



LEAST ATXKLET. 



Adults in breeding season (sexes alike). — Upper parts slate-blackish 

 (sometimes inclining to glossy black), passing into dark slate color 

 on suborbital and malar regions and chin, the scapulars intermixed 

 with more or less of white, the proximal secondaries (sometimes 

 proximal greater coverts also) more or less distinctly tipped with 

 white; acuminate feathers on forehead and lores, and elongated 

 acicular rictal and auiicular plumes white; \mder parts mostly 

 white, more or less spotted or blotched with blackish or blackish 

 slate, this frequently forming a distinct and uninterrupted band, of 

 variable width, across foreneck, usually in abrupt contrast anteriorly 

 with the immaculate white of throat; axillars and under wing-coverts 

 white and pale gray; bill dusky basally, dark reddish terminally; 

 iris white; legs and feet brownish (pale bluish in life ?). 



Winter plumage. — Sunilar to the summer plumage, but under 

 parts, including sides of neck, continuously white, the chin, however, 

 slaty, as in summer; white acicular feathers of forehead, etc., 

 usually less developed, often (in younger birds?) wanting; bill 

 without the knob at base of cuhnen. 



Young. — Similar to the winter adult but bill smaller; no trace of 

 acicular white feathers on head, but with more white on scapulars. 



Downy young. — Entirely plain dark sooty grayish brown, the 

 under parts paler and more grayish. 



Adult male. —W'm^, 90-97.5 (92.9); tail, 25.5-29 (27.1); exposed 

 cuhnen, 8-9 (8.6); tarsus, 17-19.5 (18.3); middle toe, 20-24 (22.1).« 



Adult female. —Wmg, 88.5-96 (93.6); tail, 24.5-29 (27.5); exposed 

 culmen, 7.5-9.5 (8.5); tarsus, 16-19 (18.2); middle toe, 20-23.5 

 (21.9).« 



Coasts and islands of Bering Sea and contiguous portions of 

 northern Pacific Ocean; breeding on islands m Bering Sea (Diomede, 

 St. Lawrence, King or Okewuk, and Pribilof islands), and Aleutian 

 chain; in winter, coast of eastern Siberia (Plover Bay; Usuri Bay; 

 Cape Iksurus), Commander Islands, Kuril Islands, northern Japan 

 (Hakodate), Okotsk Sea, and along North American coast as far 

 southward as Washington (Tacoma, winter of 1888); casual or 

 accidental at St. Michaels and Point Barrow, iUaska. 



TJria pusilla Pallas, Zoogr. Rosso-Asiat., ii, 1826, 373, excl. synonymy, pi. 70 

 (Kamchatka). 



Phaleris pusilla Cassin, in Baird, Rep. Pacific R. R. Surv., ix, 1858, 909; Proc. 

 Ac. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1862, 324 (Bering Straits).— Baird, Cat. N. N. Am. 

 Birds, 1859, no. 723.— Coinde, Rev. et Mag. de Zool., 1860, 403 (St. Paul 

 Island, Pribiiofs). — Elliot, lUustr. New and Unfig. N. Am. Birds, pt. 6, 

 1867 (vol. ii, 1869), pi. 68 and text. — Dall and Bannister, Trans. Chicago 



oTen specimens (mostly from Pribilof Islands, Alaska). 



