THE BIRDS OF THE BERMUDAS. 39 
vigorously with their formidable bills in defence of their home. 
The young also show fight ; in fact, the species is peculiarly fierce 
and untameable. Three young ones I kept alive for-about two 
months maintained their savage nature till the last, refusing to 
feed themselves, striking viciously at anyone who epproached 
them, and even at one another. Their flight is peculiar, but 
graceful, and they never seem tired of their perpetual wheeling and 
manceuvring. They take beautiful headers, ike a Tern or Gannet, 
in pursuit of small fish. It is rare to meet with a specimen 
possessing two good long central tail-feathers; one is generally 
smaller and shorter than the other. Some of these feathers are of 
a lovely orange-pink. They get rubbed off during incubation, and 
may be picked up near the breeding-places. Two broods are 
reared, fresh eggs being found as early as the 10th April, and 
again at the end of June: there are intermediate examples, 
probably laid by birds whose first nests have been visited by the 
spoiler. That these birds revisit their breeding-stations year after 
year is, I think, clearly shown by the following circumstance :-— 
Mr. Bartram, by way of experiment, slit the two webs of one foot, 
and cut off one or two claws, of a young bird in a nest near his 
house. Next year this bird turned up again, and made its nest 
close to the same spot. This attachment to the family residence is, 
I fancy, far from unusual with migratory birds: Swallows and 
other familiar visitors to England are known to possess it in a 
marked degree. On a calm day the bright greenish blue tint of the 
Atlantic waters, as they gently rise and fall above the white sands 
below is reflected on the glossy white breasts and under parts of 
the Tropic-birds in a most remarkable manner as they cruise about, 
at no great height, along the shores or among the islands. During 
the breeding season the parent birds ‘‘ off duty’’ are to be seen in 
the neighbourhood of their nesting-places all the morning till 
about noon, when the greater part disappear in a rather mysterious 
manner. I came to the conclusion that they proceed to a consider- 
able distance out to sea, returning at dusk, and this opinion was 
much strengthened by seeing two old birds sitting on the water 
one afternoon, at least one hundred miles from the Bermuda shores. 
This was during a voyage from Bermuda to New York, on the 
7th August, 1874, when the second ‘‘ young hopeful’’ had probably 
left, or was about to leave, the nest, and therefore does not prove 
much; but.it shows that these strong-winged birds, who would 
probably do their one hundred miles in three hours, or even less, 
do travel to such distances from land long before they have thought 
of quitting their breeding haunts. In Castle Harbour, where there 
are a great number of Tropic-birds continually on the wing, and 
where they are left comparatively undisturbed during the daytime, 
this disappearance is, or appears to be, on a somewhat smaller 
scale. 
Larus marinus, Great Black-backed Gull.—Mr. Hurdis mentions 
an immature example of this Gull, which was captured alive in the 
Great Sound in December, 1851, and Mr. Bartram has a fine speci- 
men, also in immature plumage, shot by himself near Stocks Point 
on the 27th December, 1862. 
