STORM PETREL, 45 



sure to be surrounded by them upon throwing pieces of 

 fish overboard." Mr. Dunn found these birds plentiful on 

 the small islands near St. Margaret's Hope, in Orkney, and ' 

 among the small islands lying off Scalloway, on the west 

 side of the mainland in Shetland ; and observes that, though 

 he had watched them for hours he had never seen one dive. 



In Ireland a good many breeding-stations are known, 

 although these are probably but a small portion of those 

 which exist. One of the former is Rathliu Island, off Antrim ; 

 another is Tory Island, off Donegal, where Mr. G. C. Hynd- 

 man informed Thompson that he obtained upwards of a 

 score, and on a reward being offered to the natives for the 

 Forked-tailed Petrel (P. leiicorrhoa) , one was soon pro- 

 duced, '' made to order " on the instant, by the middle 

 tail-feathers being extracted, and the outer one at each side 

 left ! Other colonies are on the islands of the coast of 

 Mayo, Galway, and Kerry, amongst which may be named 

 the Skelligs, and the Blasquets, where they are named by 

 the islanders ' Gourder ' or ' Gourdal.' In Smith's ' History 

 of Kerry,' printed in 1756, it is stated that these birds " are 

 almost one lump of fat ; when roasted, of a most delicious 

 taste, and are reckoned to exceed an ortolan, for which 

 reason the gentry hereabouts call them the Irish ortolan : 

 these birds are worthy of being transmitted a great way to 

 market, for ortolans, it is well known, are brought from 

 France to supply the markets of London"! In autumn and 

 winter this species occurs all round the coast, and after 

 stormy weather it has frequently been picked up inland. 



The Storm Petrel breeds abundantly in the Faeroes, but is 

 apparently an unfrequent visitor to Iceland, nor has its pre- 

 sence been authenticated on the coast of Norway beyond 

 Lofoten, in 69** N. lat. Merely a straggler into the Baltic, 

 it occurs throughout the North Sea and on the French 

 side of the Channel, and it has several breeding-haunts 

 off Brittany. Its range extends along the coasts of Spain 

 and Portugal, and up the Mediterranean, where it breeds 

 on many of the smaller islands, as far as the Ionian 

 Sea ; storm-driven examples have also been obtained in 



