On Birds observed in Kamchatka. 271 



XIV. — Notes on the Birds observed during Three Visits to 

 Kamchatka in 1896 and 1897. By G. E. H. Barrett- 

 Hamilton^ F.Z.S. 



During the course of my two missions to the Fur-Seal 

 Islands of the North Pacific, in the years 1896 and 1897, it 

 was on three occasions ray good fortune to visit the mainland 

 of the great Kamchatkan Peninsula. These visits were, unfor- 

 tunately, all too brief, and consisted merely of two calls at 

 Petropavlovsk, in H.M.S. 'Spartan' from the morning of the 

 14th to the evening of the 17th July 1896, in H.M.S. 'Linnet' 

 from the morning of the 27th to 9 a.m. on the 31st of August 

 1897 (for coaling and provisioning purposes), and a short stay 

 from about noon on the 21st to 6 a.m. on the 24th August 

 1897, in H.M.S. 'Linnet,' in the neighbourhood of the 

 almost unknown island of Karaginski_, off the north-eastern 

 coast. Nevertheless 1 was able to observe about 56 species 

 of interesting birds*, and to bring home a collection of 69 

 skins t (representing 44 species), some of which are of special 

 interest, either from their novelty, as in the case of the 

 Nutcracker, to which I have given the name Nucifruga 

 kamchaikensis , or because they add to our knowledge of 

 the distribution or life-history of little-known species. In 

 fact the small collection of skins made on the shore of 

 Ukiusk Bay adds a new locality to the rather meagre list 

 of places from which specimens of Kamchatkan birds are 

 known to us ; the locality is, moreover, noteworthy for its 

 propinquity to the interesting Anadyr and Chukchi regions, 

 the avifauna of which is of special interest. 



Although we are largely indebted to the labours of Russian 

 naturalists, such as Steller, Vossnessenski, Taczanowski, 

 von Kittlitz, and Dybowski, for our knowledge of the Kam- 

 chatkan avifauna, their papers are scattered through a 

 number of not easily procurable foreign periodicals, and it is 



* Out of a total of 270 ornithological specimeus procured during' the 

 course of my wanderings. 



t In all representatives of o6 genera and 64 species were seen or 

 obtained either by members of my party or by purcliase from natives. 



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