568 THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 



Petrel — Procellaria. — This peculiar genus — in which the nostrils 

 are not placed at the sides of the beak, but form two tubes upon 

 its upper ridge — embraces, according to Secbohm, about a hundred 

 species. All the birds are oceanic in their habits, severing all con- 

 nection with the land as soon as the duties of the breeding season are 

 finished, and passing the rest of their existence exclusively on the 

 wide oceans of all the divisions of the globe. Eight of the species 

 may be considered as Eiu'opean, five of which visit the neighbour- 

 hood of Heligoland 



375.— Fulmar [Eisstuemvogel]. 

 PROCELLARIA GLACIALIS, Linn.i 

 Procellaria glackdis. Nauuiann, x. 589. 

 Fulmar. Dresser, viii. 535. 



Petrel fulmar. Temminck, Mannd, ii. 802, iv. 505. 



The gales of autumn almost annually bring this bird to Heligo- 

 land. For the most part only solitary individuals are met with, 

 but in some years larger numbers occur, as for instance, in 

 December lcS73, when seventeen were shot between the 11th and 

 14th of the month ; on that occasion they were swarming round 

 the fishing-boats at sea, about eight miles from the island ; and 

 amongst them was one uniformly dark greyish-brown {diinkel 

 graubraiin) individual of the size of a Herring Gull. 



In November 1879 these bu-ds again occurred in extraordinarily 

 large numbers, ten, for example, having been shot on the 9th. Lcstris 

 pomarina also was represented in unusual abundance ; L. buffoni 

 was observed repeatedly, and on the 27th of December I obtained a 

 Procellaria pelayica. In my journal for that year I find the fol- 

 lowing remark at the close of November : ' Never before so many 

 L. ■pomarina and Procellaria glacialis as this autumn.' 



Breeding colonies of these birds are found on both sides of 

 Davis Strait, in Iceland, St. Kilda, the Faroes, Spitzbergen, Nova 

 Zembla, the Kurile Islands, and on Prince Albert Land in Arctic 

 America. 



376. — Great Shearwater [Grosser Stuemvogel]. 

 PROCELLARIA MAJOR, Faber.^ 



G-rcat Sliearwater. Dresser, viii. 527. 



Puffin majeur. Temminck, Manuel, iv. 507. 



In Reymers' time, when the smaller species, P. anglorum, still 

 occurred here in abundance, that collector once shot one of the larger 



' FulmariUi y/acialif! {Lhm.). - I'uffiuiDi major, Yaher. 



