VOL. VI.] NOTES. 375 



LITTLE TERN BREEDING IN NORTHUMBERLAND. 



As the Little Tern {Sterna m. minuta) is not recorded as 

 breeding north of the Tees on the East Coast of England, it may- 

 be well to state that I found on the Northumbrian coast one 

 pair in 1911 ; the nest contamed one egg on July 2nd. In 

 the same locality m 1912 I found two nests, one contained 

 one egg and the other contained two eggs, on July 7th. 



Catharine Hodgkin. 



IVORY-GULL IN IRELAND. 



A BEAUTIFULLY marked but immature specimen (female) 

 of the Ivory-Gull {Pagophila ehurnea) was shot at Teelin 

 Pier, Carrick, co. Donegal, on March 25th, 1913, and 

 forwarded to me in the flesh. This rare Arctic -visitor is 

 the fifth Irish record and the second this spring — aU were 

 obtained m the first quarter of the year. Like many Arctic 

 birds which straggle to Ireland this Gull was readily 

 approached and comparatively fearless of man. 



In a general way the wing resembled that of a very old 

 male Greenland Falcon. The feet were very dark (not 

 black) — relatively small — with stout rough scalloped webs 

 — and sharp skua-like claws — ^the " well defined web " of 

 Saunders Manual, between the tarsus and hind toe was 

 not well marked — and was more a thickening of the skin 

 at the base of the toe, than a web. 



A perfectly fresh specimen of an Ivory Gull is seldom 

 available for examination in the British Isles, hence these 

 details. Richard M. Barrington. 



[The record referred to by Mr. Barrington is one by Mr. R. 

 Warren in the Zoologist (1913, pp. 108-9), where it is stated 

 that on February 17th, 1913, a man went into the shop of 

 Mr. Rohu, taxidermist of Cork, with the wing, leg and foot, 

 and part of the breast of a freshly killed Ivory-Gull. He 

 had observed a " large hawk " in one of the trees which 

 line the Marina (an embankment separating the City of Cork 

 Park from the River Lee), and as he passed the hawk, it 

 dropped the remains of this Gull. — H.F.W.] 



EARLY NESTING OF MOORHEN. 



On March 27th, 1913, I noticed a pair of Moorhens {GalUnula 

 ch. chloropus) making a nest on a pond near Felsted, Essex. 

 On going to see how far operations had been carried, I was 

 surprised to find that the nest, not as large as my hand, had 

 an egg m it : the birds were making the nest about the egg. 



