442 



NATATORES. FRATERCULA. PIFFIX. 



Food. 



General 

 descrip- 

 tion. 

 Male Bird. 



great distance at once, being obliged to exert its short and 

 narrow wings to their utmost power for the support of its 

 body, which is heavy in proportion to its dimensions. It 

 feeds principally upon young sprats, though other small fish 

 and crustacean are occasionally devoured. In diving it dis- 

 plays equal expertness with the others of the present family. 

 It is a bird of neat appearance, and its bill, though large, is 

 richly coloured, and contrasts well with the black and white 

 of its plumage *. From the shape of the bill, and correspond- 

 ing bulk of the head, it seems to have obtained the greater 

 part of the provincial synonyms above quoted. 



PLATE 83. * Fig. 1. Represents an old male bird of the na- 

 tural size. 



Crown of the head, upper parts of the body, and collar 

 round the neck, glossy black. Cheeks and throat pearl- 

 grey, darkest towards the base of the lower mandible. 

 Under plumage pure white. Legs orange-red. Bill 

 one inch and a half in depth, bluish-grey at the base, 

 the middle part orange-red, and the tip bright red ; the 

 upper mandible having three, and the lower one two, 

 distinct furrows. The horny appendages to the eyelids 

 pearl-grey ; that upon the upper lid triangular, on the 

 lower lid oblong. 



Fig. 2. Is supposed to be a bird of a year old. 



Bill scarcely one inch in depth, and with the furrows not 

 so distinctly marked as in Fig. 1. Two in this state, 

 exactly alike as to their bills and legs, were killed near 

 the Fern Islands in June 1827. 



Young. Fig. 3. Is the young bird of a week old,fcovered with a long 

 sooty black down. 



* White varieties occasionally occur. Mr NEILL informs me, that he 

 lately saw one alive in the possession of a gentleman who had obtained it 

 when young the preceding year, with only two or three black feathers up- 

 on the back, the rest of the plumage being pure white. 



