PROCELLARIIDrE. 73^ 



MADEIRAN FORK-TAILED PETREL. 

 OcEANODROMA CASTRO (Harcourt). 



An example of this species was picked up dead on the beach at 

 Littlestone in Kent, on the 5th of December 1895, and was 

 examined in the flesh by Mr. Boyd Alexander, to whom it now 

 belongs. It was exhibited at a meeting of the British Ornithologists' 

 Club on the 29th of April following (Ibis 1896, p. 401). 



This Petrel was known by the scientific name of Oceanodroma 

 cryptohucura (Ridgway), until Padre Ernesto Schmitz, of Madeira, 

 drew Mr. Ogilvie Grant's attention to the fact that the species had 

 been thoroughly diagnosed in 1851 by the late Mr. E. Vernon 

 Harcourt, who found it on the Desertas islets, and named it 

 Thalassidroma castro, because it was called " Roque de castro" by 

 the Madeiran fishermen (Ibis 1898, p. 313). This discovery 

 having been totally overlooked, the species was described as new by 

 Mr. Ridgway in 1882, from examples obtained in the Hawaiian 

 Islands, where others were subsequently procured for I^Ir. Scott B. 

 Wilson, by ^Ir. Francis Gay (Aves Hawaiienses, pt. iv.). An 

 American expedition to the Galapagos, moreover, met with this 

 species in that group ; while, passing to the Southern Ocean, there 

 are specimens in the British Museum from Australia and the Island 

 of St. Helena. In 'The Auk' for 1897, p. 297, Mr. W. Palmer 

 states that after the severe storms of August 23rd to 27th 1893, two 

 birds of this species were picked up within the limits of Washington 

 city. To continue the list of wanderers, Mr. Herluf Winge, in his 

 fourteenth Report of Birds which have occurred at the Danish 

 Lights, records that in 1896 an example struck the light-ship at 

 Drogden, a few miles south of Copenhagen, on the 19th of 



