STERCORARIUS CATARRHACTES, 345 
plucked, Skuas swoop from the nest—James’s head nearly knocked 
off by them. Sometimes the loose bits of moss or grass lying near 
the nest, and sometimes the direction of the swoop, gave us indication 
of the locality. They look large birds on the ground. Their ery is 
not loud or constant. They do not seem flurried like other birds 
when people are near their nest. The top of the hill where they breed 
in Sandée is an extensive flat, broken up into islands of turf, with 
intervening open spaces and channels of small fragments of stone, 
almost like the refuse of a Derbyshire mine-hillock, except in colour. 
These little stones were often arranged in curious chess-board 
patterns, probably by the action of snow or frost. This is well worthy 
of note!, The cup-shaped hollows of nests of former years were 
numerous in the moss. The birds were a little shot down last year, 
as they began to kill sheep. I shot some by the lakes between 
Sands and Skoben, but not near the breeding-place. No Gulls bred 
near the Skuas. 
[The eggs are not now separable into different nests, owing to the 
indistinctness of the pencil-marks originally placed on them. | 
§ 4678. Zwo—Viderée, Ferée, 18 July, 1819. 
After dinner we walk with the pastor to see the Skuas. Last 
year two hundred and sixty eggs were taken. They have been much 
robbed this year, but the pastor kindly allows me to take two rather 
remarkably coloured eggs. We find some young. They run out of 
the nest when they are very small, and are covered with a tawny 
down, having blue legs. One of the old birds in making a swoop 
dashed its dung over the whole of the breast of one of our party. 
On Lille Dimon, on the 27th of July, we took some young Skuas, 
which ate krang or whale’s flesh or blubber most readily, but 
unfortunately they dicd on their way to Shetland. 
On the 19th of July, before getting into Quanna Sound from 
Svinoe, I shot a Skua eating a Puffin. The first | saw was on the 
25th of June, land then in full view, i.e. Ferée, seen for the first 
time. The white mark across the wings is a marked character of the 
Skua in flight. It identifies the bird seen in one of Parry’s Arctic 
Voyages, and also one seen by Robert Goodsir in 1819. 
1 (On this curious subject Mr. Wolley communicated a paper to the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science at its meeting at Leeds in September, 
1858. He had his attention recalled to it during the previous summer, while in 
Iceland.—Ip. | 
