CALIFORNIA WATER BIRDS. 21 



From the outset a large proportion of the Murres seen 

 had the sides of the head and neck, the throat, and fore- 

 neck brown — a state of plumage the books describe as 

 peculiar to the season of reproduction. Four examples 

 at hand (three males and a female) differ only from the 

 June birds in the collection in being unworn and unfaded 

 and in having the feathers of the upper parts not tipped 

 with a lighter color. Of the four white-throated speci- 

 mens preserved, two females and a male have a brown 

 collar on the fore-neck. The chin in each is brown to a 

 varying extent and the white of the throat more or less 

 mottled with the same color. The fourth example (a male) 

 has but faint traces of the collar and the throat is chiefly 

 pure white. The white latero-occipital stripes scarcely in- 

 vade the cervix in one of these specimens, and the dark 

 markings on the sides and flanks are distinct in all of them. 



Two August young-of-the-year in the collection of the 

 Academy are immaculate white below, save a little dark 

 drab-gray in the interramal space. An adult male (No. 

 7418, Aug. 10, 1887, San Francisco Bay, Cal.) shows a 

 strong tendency to melanism, the white feathers of the 

 lower parts being conspicuously margined with brownish 

 drab. Indications of similar abnormal coloration exist in 

 a winter example of Uria lomvia from Greenland in the 

 American Museum of Natural History. 



There is, also, in the Lawrence Collection of the Amer- 

 ican Museum a specimen (No. 46,093) of Megalestris 

 skua, which has the following legend on its label: " Ster- 

 corarius catarracles. Calif. — off Monterey " (written in 

 ink). " Presented by N. Pike, Esq." (written in pencil). 

 This is doubtless the example referred to in Baird's Birds 

 of North America, 1858, p. 838. 



Rissa tridactyla pollicaris. Pacific Kittiwake. — 

 Several hundred yards from the outer rocks at Point 



