568 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



during the beginning of the nesting season, and a few of them do not leave it until 

 January, soon after the new season's eggs are laid. 



The adult albatross do not breed every year, as they do not finish feeding their young 

 until after the new season's eggs are laid (by other birds) and incubation has started. 

 Consequently there must be an interval of at least one season between the consecutive 

 matings of any one bird. 



In the moult of the first year after leaving the nest the brown-black plumage of the 

 young adult gives place to white feathers with black cross pencillings, except on the 

 face, which is white. The wings and tip of the tail remain black. This is the typical 

 exulans plumage, and in succeeding moults white feathers replace the barred ones 

 more and more until the chionoptera plumage is attained. This is white, including the 

 tail, with black ends to the primaries and outer secondaries, and with a trace of pen- 

 cilling on the scapulars (Fig. i). 



The food of the albatross consists offish and cephalopods. The stomachs of a number 

 of young ones examined at Coal Harbour in September, 1925, contained remains of 

 Nototheniid fish up to eighteen inches in length and numerous cephalopod beaks and 

 spermatophores. They also contained roots of tussac and burnet, and the birds were 

 seen to reach out of the nests and pick these up from the sides and bases of them. 

 At sea the adult birds, with other species, quickly gather round the whalers when they 

 have killed a whale, and eat the blood clots and " krill " vomited up by the dying whale. 

 When each whale is killed a circular hole is cut in the tail so that a rope can be passed 

 through it. The albatross are the only birds big enough to eat the circular piece of 

 blubber which comes out of this and great is the competition amongst them to secure it. 



Diomedea melanophrys, Temm. 



Black-Browed Albatross 

 (Plate XLV, figs. 1,2; Plate L, figs. 2-4) 



Black-Browed Albatross or Mollymauks — called " White Mollyhawks " by the whalers 

 —abound at sea off South Georgia all the year round and sometimes are seen in extensive 

 flocks. They rarely come into the bays, but are occasionally to be seen near the whaling 

 stations. During the season 1926-7 a flock of about a dozen took up their quarters at 

 Husvik Whaling Station, paddling around the bay picking up scraps, becoming so tame 

 that if a little food was thrown to them they swam up to be fed, like domestic ducks. 



In the nesting season they come ashore early in October in enormous numbers, 

 breeding in rookeries on the cliffs, especially at the north-west end of the island. There 

 are also rookeries at the south-east end near Cape Disappointment. The rookeries 

 are on the steep slopes at the summits of the cliffs, and each contains several thousand 

 nests. The nests are built of mud and peaty moss on ledges amongst the tussac. They 

 are cylindrical, from one to one and a half feet in height, with vertical sides and a 

 depression on the top (Plate L, figs. 2, 3, 4). The materials for the nests are collected 

 from the ledges in the immediate vicinity. When the nest is being built the female 

 stands on it and the male collects the mud and brings it to his mate (Plate L, fig. 2). 



