516 THE DIVING BIRDS — PYGOPODES. 



Hab. Coasts and islands of the North Pacific (Kamtschatka, Prybilof Islands, Aleutians, etc.). 

 Japan. Accidental in Sweden ! 



Sp. Char. Adult, breeding-plumage : Head (all round), sides of neck, sides, and entire upper 

 parts slate-dusky or dull black, more plumbeous on the throat, which is usually more or less mixed 

 with whitish. Lower parts, except as described, plain white. A line of narrow acicular white 

 feathers beginning just beneath the eye and extending back over the aurieulars. Bill wholly 

 orange-red ; iris white ; feet brownish in the dried skin. Adult, in winter (!) : " Upper parts as 

 described above, but no whitish feathers below and behind the eye. Entire under parts white, mar- 

 bled on the throat, breast, and sides with dusky or blackish ; this color usually occupying chiefly 

 or wholly the tips of the feathers, whose bases are white. The mottling is thickest on the breast, 

 most sparse on the abdomen ; but it varies in degree with almost every specimen " (Coues). 

 Young (?) : "A state of plumage is described as that of the young, in which the white occupies 

 almost the whole under parts, and is scarcely mixed with dusky, even on the throat and breast" 

 (Coues). 



Wing, about 5.40-6.00 inches ; culmen, about .60 ; greatest depth of the bill nearly the same ; 

 tarsus, 1.00 ; middle toe, 1.10. 



In his "Monograph of the Jidda-" Dr. Coues describes the adult as having the "chin, throat, 

 breast, and flanks fuliginous or brownish black, lighter or grayer below than above ;'' but in a 

 series of nearly fifty examples, including thirty-nine collected on the breeding-grounds in June 

 and July, not one has the breast uniform dusky, the greater number having not only the breast, 

 but the jugulum also, white, the latter, however, clouded with dusky. 1 In many even the chin 

 and throat are mottled with grayish white. All these specimens, it may be remarked, possess the 

 streak of white filaments across the auricular region. 



This is an oceanic and a North Pacific species, resident in the open sea, and only 

 visiting land for the purposes of breeding. It is found in the Aleutian Islands, and 

 also at the Prybilof Group, and is distributed irregularly throughout the Northern 

 Pacific and Behring's Sea. 



It is of accidental occurrence in Sweden. M. Olphe-Galliard records in the " Revue 

 et Magasin de Zoologie " (186S, pp. 95, 96) the occurrence in Sweden of an individual 

 of this species. It was taken alive near Jonkoping about the middle of December, 

 1860 ; and the " Ibis " of 1869 (p. 221), gives from Professor Sundeval some further 

 particulars of this extraordinary fact. The bird had crept, through a fence set along 

 the edge of the water by the side of Lake Vetter, into the courtyard of a weaving 

 manufactory, where it was caught by two men, and soon after died. Its species was 

 determined by Professor Fredrik Malrngren, of the University of Lund. 



Mr. Dall, in his Notes on the Avifauna of the Aleutian Islands west of Unalashka, 

 speaks of it as resident and not uncommon at Amchitka, but not seen anywhere else. 

 He thinks that Brandt is mistaken in supposing that the peculiarly shaped bill is used 

 for opening bivalve shells. He has never found anything in its crop except fragments 

 of Crustacea, and thinks that the bird uses its sharp, recurved lower mandible in 

 (Tearing out the softer parts of the larger Isopods, and in picking them out of crevices 

 in the rocks and fromi under round stones. 



Mr. H. W. Elliott states that this quaintly beaked bird is quite common on the 

 Prybilof Group, and that it can be obtained at St. George's in considerable numbers. 

 It comes here early in May, and selects a deep chink or crevice of some inaccessible 

 cliff, where it lays its single egg and rears its young. It is very quiet and unde- 

 monstrative during the pairing-season, its only note being a low, sonorous, vibrating 

 whistle. Like the Simorhynchus cristatellus, it will breed in company with the 



1 Since the above was written, several specimens from Behring's Island, collected by Dr. L. Stejneger 

 in May, 18S2, have been received at the National Museum. These have the throat and upper part of the 

 jugulum uniform dusky ; but the whole breast is pure white, like the abdomen. 



