1 44 SEA-BIRDS 



of the North Island of New Zealand, and may be more sedentary in 

 ranging-habits than the south polar skua. The skuas seen at sea in 

 the Atlantic south of the equator have been identified on the west 

 side as belonging to the Falklands race antarctica; on the east side the 

 affinities of the Tristan-Gough breeding-population are obscure 

 (they most closely resemble lonnbergi, it seems) and the identity of the 

 race commonly observed off the west coast of South Africa is unknown, 

 as is the form noticed chasing terns in the Seychelles in the northern 

 Indian Ocean. 



There is so far no formal proof that the southern bonxies of today 

 penetrate to the North Atlantic, though they must have done so on 

 occasion if the theory of the antarctic origin of the British-Iceland 

 population be the correct one. Bonxies have been seen between the 

 equator and the West Indies in April and May, off the West African 

 coast south of the Cape Verde Islands in November, January and 

 February, and in the central part of the Sargasso Sea between October 

 and December (not in any other month). But whether these are 

 southern or northern is not certain, as none has been collected. North 

 of these latitudes bonxies spread widely over the sea, parasitising gulls 

 and terns, from New York to the Straits of Gibraltar, and there is no 

 doubt that they are northern bonxies; a bird ringed at Hermaness, 

 Shetland, has been recovered near Boston (Massachusetts), and birds 

 from Noss, also in Shetland, have been recovered in Spain and Portugal. 

 Bonxies haunt American waters through the summer, for instance the 

 fishing-grounds of Nantucket and the Newfoundland Banks; but the 

 suggestion that these may — because of the season when they are 

 seen — be southern birds must be resisted. Indeed, they wander far 

 at all seasons, for their breeding-grounds are confined to south Iceland, 

 the Faeroe Islands, Shetland and the island of Hoy in Orkney, while 

 foraging birds are often seen west, north and east to Labrador, Green- 

 land, Jan Mayen, Bear Island, Spitsbergen, and have been observed 

 as far as Novaya Zemlya. A few birds enter the Mediterranean, 

 though they are not regular in any part of it east of Gibraltar. 



Outside the Iceland-Britain area, there are only rumours of North 

 Atlantic bonxie colonies. Ludwig Kumlien (1879), in his exploration 

 of Baffin Island, supposed the presence of a colony on Lady Franklin 

 Island, off" the south-east corner of Baffin Island; but there is no 

 modern evidence of a colony anywhere in this area, or — as has also 

 been rumoured — in south Greenland. 



In south-east Iceland the great ice-cap of Vatnajokull drains into 



