492 LARID.E. 



the other species of sea-fowl, even to sucking their eggs 

 "whenever their owners left them uncovered. This species is 

 found over the seas and coasts of the North of Europe and 

 North America, but from the breeding-stations in Scotland 

 and Norway, Avhich they quit in August, some of the young 

 birds of the year rove southward, down the wxstern and 

 eastern lines of the coast of England, as before mentioned in 

 reference to other species of the genus. Richardson's Skua 

 has been killed in Lancashire, and on the eastern coast of 

 Ireland, both in the bays of Belfast and Dublin. This 

 Skua Avas seen by Sir Wm. Jardine upon the Durness Firth 

 in Suthcrlandshire, in June, 1834. Several examples have 

 been killed on the coast of Durham late in August and early 

 in September, and most of them young birds of the year ; 

 others have been obtained in the county of Norfolk. Some 

 years since I saw a young bird that had just been shot on the 

 Thames at Battersea ; and in the autumn of 1842, four 

 young birds of the year were shot on the reservoir at Kings- 

 bury, a few miles north of London ; two of these specimens 

 were more uniformly dark brown than the other two, from 

 having lost many more of the light brown margins of the first 

 set of feathers. These birds appear also on the coasts of 

 Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and Devonshire. Both the. adult 

 and the young have been taken in Cornwall. M. de Selys 

 Longchamps, in his Fauna of Belgium, says, Lestris Richard- 

 sonii occurs occasionally on the Dutch and Belgian shores. 



The young bird during its first autumn and Avinter has the 

 base of the beak and the cere brownish-grey ; the anterior 

 portion conspicuously curved and black ; the irides dark 

 brown ; the head and neck pale brown, streaked with dark 

 brown ; the back, wing-coverts, and tertials umber-brown, 

 margined with wood brown ; wing-primaries brownish-black, 

 tipped with pale brown ; tail-feathers pale brown at the base, 

 then brownish-black to the end ; the central pair half an inch 



