FORK-TAILED PETREL 



209 



body of a petrel formed, indeed, the only liL;ht of these primitive 

 people ; while the yountj birds, when roasted, constitute, it is said, a 

 by no means despicable dish. In summer the petrels breed largely 

 on the Blaskets, making their nests, which consist of only a few 

 blades of dry grass, in holes among the rocks scattered over the turf- 

 clad slopes, or in crevices of stone-walls. The single egg, which 

 measures just over an inch in length, and is dull or dirty white in 

 colour, sparsely dotted with reddish-brown specks sometimes forming 

 a zone near the larger end, is laid in May ; but this appears to be 

 followed in the late summer or earl}' autumn by a second, as fresh 

 eggs have been taken on the Blaskets in September. The Skelligs, 

 which are near the Blaskets, and Tory Island, off the Donegal coast, 

 are other favourite breeding-places of the petrel in Ireland ; while to 

 the northward the Hebrides, Orkneys, Shetlands, and Faroes afford 

 well-known nesting grounds. A few petrels also breed on the Welsh 

 coast and on the Scilly Islands. 



Fork-tailed Petrel ^^^^^ ^^^^ common around the coasts of our islands 

 (Oeeanodroma ^^ ^^^ fork-tailed, or Leach's, petrel, a member of a 

 leueorrhoa). genus, with about a dozen species, widel\- distributed 

 on the warmer seas, and characterised by the deep 

 forking of the tail and the relative shortness of the shank, or lower 

 segment of the leg, which is 

 never longer than the middle- 

 toe and claw. The present 

 species is a native of the tem- 

 perate zone of the North 

 Atlantic and Pacific, and is in 

 general only a winter-visitor to 

 the shores of the British Islands, 

 where it is not uncommonly- 

 driven far inland during storm}- 

 weather, a specimen having 

 been taken in Somerset so re- 

 cently as 1903. It nests, how- 

 ever, on the island of St. Kilda 

 and in the Outer Hebrides, and 

 a few pairs have from time to tiine been detected breedin"- on the 

 Blasket Islands, off the Kerrv coast, as well as in Mayo, where an 

 egg was taken in 1899. Otherwise this petrel is chiefl}- known as 

 an accidental visitor to Ireland. 



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