350 BRITISH BIRDS. 



common, and is only known as an irregular visitor. It is sometimes 

 driven inland by storms. 



The Pomarine Skua is a circumpolar bird, breeding l)cyond the Arctic 

 circle on the shores and tundras of both hemispheres. It is not known to 

 breed anywhere on continental Europe, but in Asia its nest has been taken 

 on the Yalmal and Taimur peninsulas and in the extreme north-east of 

 Siberia, and it probably breeds on Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen. It 

 occasionally visits the Faroes and Iceland, has been met with in 

 Greenland, and probably breeds throughout Arctic America. In winter 

 it occasionally visits the Baltic, the German Ocean, the INIediterranean, 

 and the west coast of Africa, where it has occurred almost as far south 

 as the Cape. In Asia it has been procured in winter once in Japan, once 

 on the coast of Tenasserim, and once off the coast of North Australia. On 

 the Pacific coast of America it has occurred off the coast of Peru ; on the 

 Atlantic side it has occasionally been found as far south as New York, and 

 it has also occurred in Pennsylvania and the Mexican lakes. It has no 

 near ally. 



The Pomarine Skua is even more oceanic in its habits than the Great 

 Skua ; it breeds further north, and wanders further south in winter. So 

 reluctant does it seem to come inshore, even to rest, that it is not an un- 

 common thing to find birds far out at sea, drifting almost helpless on the 

 waves, tired out with battling against the storm. 



All the Skuas resemble each other very closely in their habits ; and in 

 the nature of its food and its mode of acquiring it the Pomarine Skua does 

 not difier from its congeners. Its notes are described as very similar, and 

 it has the same rapid flight, with the almost Swallow-like facility of making 

 sudden turns. It can swim with the same ease, and is equally incapable 

 of plunging like a Tern or diving like a Guillemot. 



The Pomarine Skua is a much more arctic bird than Richardson^s Skua, 

 or even than the Great Skua, but is not quite so much so as Buffbn^s Skua, 

 which is the Arctic Skua par excellence. On the other hand, it does not 

 appear to range as far inland as Buffon's Skua. When Harvie-Brown and 

 I were in the valley of the Petchora, we saw abundance of both Buffbn's 

 and Richardson^s Skuas between lat. 68" and 69°, but only the latter 

 species was breeding so far south. It was only when we had sailed out of 

 the delta of the Petchora into the sea between Nova Zembla and Kolguiev 

 (between lat. 69^ and 70 ) that the Pomarine Skua appeared. INIidden- 

 dorff found all three species breeding on the Taimur peninsula ; but Buftbn^s 

 Skua was the only one which he saAv north of lat. 74^". 



Middendorff found the Pomarine Skua breeding in very great numbers 

 near the Taimur lake in lat. 74^ It arrived on the 18th of June, but it 

 was not until the 19th of July that he found eggs. No nest was made 

 beyond a depression in the moss on the tundi-a. The number of eggs seems 



