232 THE BIRDS OF SHERWOOD FOREST. 
should leave their usual marine feeding grounds at all, 
and especially to penetrate so far inland, when their 
prospects of congenial food are so uncertain. 
The Lesser Black-backed Gull (Z. fuscus) I have 
known to visit us twice, both times in May—once in 
1855, at Bothamsal, and the other in 1859 at Markham 
Moor; both were young birds in immature plumage, 
and both were of cowrse shot. 
I have only one more to add to my list, and that is 
that little, active ocean roamer, the Stormy Petrel 
(Thalassidroma pelagica). It is strange that a bird so 
peculiarly maritime in its habits should have been noted 
in the heart of Sherwood Forest! Few birds visit terra 
jirma less than this smallest of our sea birds; and those 
that have been taken in various parts of England have, 
I believe, always been in winter, and have generally 
been blown out of their marine haunts by gales or 
storms. 
A pair, male and female, was shot on Thoresby Lake 
in the winter of 1845, and thus I claim a place for them 
in our local fauna—they were skimming over the water 
in their usual manner. 
Often have I with delight watched the ceaseless ac- 
tivity of these little dwellers on the sea; whether the sea 
was calm, or whether 
“In breeze, or gale, or storm, 
Icing the pole, or in the torrid zone dark heaving,” 
it made no matter—there was this little petrel steadily 
pursuing its way. The boundless ocean is its home, and 
I have seen it more than a thousand miles from the 
nearest land, tipping the waves with its little feet, and 
following in the wake of the ship to pick up such frag- 
