220 



British Birds. 



THE SOOTY 

 SHEARWATER. 

 [Ptiffinus grist'iis.) 



S,'C p. 2 IS. 



Cape Verde Islands, there is nothing extraordinar\- in its occurrence in British waters. 

 It has a ver)' wide distribution over tlie seas of the tropics, and ranges from New 

 Zealand and Australia through the Atlantic to the Madeira group. 



Several specimens of the Sooty Shearwater have been 

 obtained on our coasts in summer and autumn, but it can only 

 be considered to be an accidental visitor to Great Britain. It is 

 a small species, about eighteen inches in length, with a \\'ing ot 

 twelve inches, but it can easily be distinguished by the sooty- 

 brown colour of both upper and under surface, and by its inner wing-coverts, which 

 are white with dusky shafts to the feathers. It is almost cosmopolitan in its range, 

 being found in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, reaching to the Faeroe Islands 

 in the former and to the Kurile group in the hitter, while in the south its range 

 extends to the Straits of Magellan, as well as to the Auckland Islands and New 

 Zealand. It breeds in the small islands in the latter region, laying a single white 

 egg in a burrow, which it excavates for itself in the peaty soil. 



The species of the genus CEstri-latci, to which the Capped Petrel 

 belongs, differ from the members of the genus Piiffiinis in having 

 a rounded, instead of a compressed, tarsus, in the shorter bill, and 

 in the smaller si/e of the hallux. The Capped Petrel is a very 

 rare bird, and but few specimens have been obtained. Nothing 

 is known of the place where it breeds, but its nesting habitat is believed to be 

 in the mountains of some of the We-;t Indian Islands, probably Haiti, Martinique, 

 or Guadeloupe. From the latter i^-land there are lour specimens in the Paris 

 Museum, and single examples have been obtained in Hungary, near Boulogne, in 

 l-lastern F^lorida, and on Long Island, New York One British specimen was captured 

 in Norfolk in the spring of 1850. In this species the back is sooty-brown and the head 

 black, forming the cap from which tlie bird takes its name ; the back of the neck is 

 white, like the under surface and the upper tail-coverts. 



As an instance of the way in which Petrels wander from their 

 normal habitats, no better example could have been found than 

 in the occur- 



THE CAPl^EU 

 I^ETREL. 



{(Jistrclatahu-sitiita.) 



THE WHITE- 

 THROATED 

 GREY PETREL. 

 {(Estrilntn brevipes.) 



rence ot O. 



brevipes in 

 F2ngland. A single specimen was 

 presented to the Biitish Museum 

 by Mr. Willis Bund : it was 

 obtained near Aber^stwith in the 

 winter of iS8g. The only habitat 

 of the species previously known 

 was in the Pacific Ocean, hav- 

 ing been met with m the Fiji 



^1 



The WinTE-TMKoATi.i) Gui.v Petkel. 



