129 



suitable holes are not very abundant. At Water Kay, where 

 they were more abundant than at any other place, in an extent 

 of two miles only eleven birds were found. The holes chosen 

 for their abodes are seldom shallow, and are often so windinjr 

 that, though their harsh note can be heard, they can only be pro- 

 cured by demolishing the rock. In their habits, except that of 

 diving, which I am ignorant whether they practise or not, they 

 closely resemble the terns, as they also do in their mode of flight 

 and external appearance ; and with that family they should be 

 associated. 



On their breeding-places being approached, when they are out 

 of their holes, they hover over the intruder, screaming and dart- 

 ing at him in precisely the same manner that the terns do. The 

 long tail-feathers are never separated w^hen flying, and the French 

 name " paille en queue " is very expressive. I procured a single 

 specimen with a pale straw-colored bill ; it was a male, the plu- 

 mage nearly pure white, much more so than in any of the orange- 

 billed birds, and the fifth primary had the black narrowly edged 

 externally with white, the whole length. I am not prepared to 

 say that this bird, which agrees, with the exceptions above men- 

 tioned, with the other, is a different species, and if so, which of 

 them is the Jiavirostris of Brandt. The orange-billed specimens 

 were both male and female, and there was no external peculiarity 

 by which the sex could be determined. The figure in Gray's 

 " Genera " of this bird is very good. My specimen agrees gene- 

 rally with Mr. Geo. N. Lawrence's description, in the 9th volume 

 of the Pacific Railroad Report. They are precisely alike in their 

 markings, varying only in the shade of salmon, which is always 

 deepest on the long tail-feathers and next on the back and hind 

 neck. The tarsus and hind toe are not yellow, but flesh-colored, 

 and this color extends obliquely across the foot from the basal 

 extremity of the outer toe to the end of the 1st phalanx of the 

 inner toe. There is no black that I can discover at the base of 

 the 6th primary, though its shaft, as well as those of all the 

 others, is black except toward the tip. The white tips of the five 

 outer primaries diminish in extent from the 1st to the 3d, and 

 then again increase to the 5th. The single egg is large for the 

 size of the bird, whitish, covered almost entirely with reddish 

 chocolate colored spots finely dotted over the surface, which 



PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOI.. VII. 9 OCTOBER, 1859. 



