28 BULLETIN 121, UNITED STATES NATIONAL. MUSEUM. 



once on reaching the water. This rookery faces the entrance to Royal Sound 

 iind is about 200 feet above sea level. The birds possibly lay in September. 

 The nests, some 3 feet in diameter, are merely hollows among the broken stems 

 of Azorella and in the sand, and in the former the young are partially hidden 

 and sheltered. The rookery extended for some 200 yards. 



I found several young birds which liad just lost their grey down and had 

 assumed a shining black plumage, a phase on which I know of no observations. 

 I do not see why this coat should be exchanged later on for what is a very poor 

 one in compaiison. I also saw this black phase 800 miles east of Kerguelen, 

 on the return to home (February 22d). Near Accessible Bay, on February 8th, 

 I observed many young birds nearly ready to fly. In their stomachs I found 

 the tongues of prions and penguins. 



Plinnages. — The plumage changes oi" the giant petrel are not very 

 Avell understood, but evidently the first plumage assumed by young 

 birds is the shining black plumage referred to above. Mr. Clarke 

 (190G) noted that: 



Tlie color of the birds ranged from very dark brown through all shades of 

 chocolate, and from gray through light gray and mottled white to white. Some 

 of these facts indicate interbreeding between the two forms and, i>erhaps, be- 

 tween their offspr.ng and typically colored birds of others. Dr. Pirie thinks that 

 they interbreed, because he has no recollection of seeing two white birds together 

 on the nesting grounds. 



He also stated that : " The proportion of birds in pure white plu- 

 mage in the rookeries was not more, perhaps less, than 2 per cent." 

 Some writers seem lo think that the dark colored birds are the young 

 birds and that, as they grow^ older, they become lighter gray, then 

 mottled with white, and finally pure white. Others suggest that there 

 may be two color phases and that the mottled birds are the results of 

 interbreeding. There is not much positive evidence in support of 

 either of these theories, and very little is known about any definite 

 sequence of molts to produce the various plumages. 



Food. — The giant fulmar has been well named the " vulture of the 

 sea," as the following accounts of its gluttonous habits will show. 

 Dr. E. A. Wilson (1907), the antarctic explorer, writes: 



Ossifraga feeds mainly upon carrion, though its character is not above sus- 

 jncion in the matter of attacking living animals. In one case, at any rate, the 

 evidence of its having attacked man in the water is hardly open to doubt; I 

 quote Mr. Howard Saunders, who writes: "Mr. Arthur G. Guillemard states 

 that a sailor who was picked up had his arms badly lacerated in defending his 

 head from the attacks of an ' albatross,' which may well have been this giant 

 petrel." 



We constantly saw it feeding upon .seals' blubber, dead penguins, and any 

 other animal refuse that happened to lie in its way, but we ourselves never saw 

 any living animal attacked; and although Mr. Eagle Clarke (1906) mentions 

 " abundant remains of recently killed young penguins " in their rookeries in the 

 South Oi'kneys, he says nothing in this case to prevent one from believing that 

 the birds merely picked up the remains of what the skuas had killed, or of birds 

 that had succumbed to climatic causes. 



