RICHARDSON'S SKUA. 633 



ever, choosing the lower grounds. Here, also, they are 

 the persecutors of the other species of sea-fowl, even id 

 sucking their eggs whenever their owners leave them un- 

 covered. 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, which they quit 

 in August, some of the young birds of the year rove south- 

 ward, down the western 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 Lan- 

 cashire, and on the eastern coast of Ireland, both in the 

 bays of Belfast and Dublin. This Skua was seen by Sir 

 Wm. Jardine upon the Durness Firth in Sutherlandshire, 

 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 Kingsbury, 

 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 

 Richardsonii occurs occasionally on the Dutch and Belgian 

 shores. 



The young bird during its first autumn and winter 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 



