

COMMON SKUA. 605 



other side of the British Channel specimens have been 

 obtained on the coasts of Germany, Holland, and France. 



Mr. Hey sham has noticed one on the coast of Cumber- 

 land, an adult female, which allowed herself to be seized 

 while she was in the act of killing a Herring Gull. Mr. 

 Thompson includes the Common Skua among the visiters 

 to Ireland, and it has been shot on the Severn, in Corn- 

 wall, and in Devonshire. 



In this species the bill and its cere are black ; irides 

 dark brown ; the whole of the head and neck dark umber- 

 brown, slightly varied by streaks of reddish-brown ; back, 

 wings, and tail dark brown ; scapulars and tertials mar- 

 gined with pale reddish-brown ; wing-primaries blackish- 

 brown, rusty brownish- white at the base ; the two middle 

 tail-feathers a little longer, and rather darker in colour than 

 the others ; chin, throat, neck in front, breast, and all the 

 under surface of the body uniform clove-brown ; legs, toes, 

 and their membranes black ; the tarsi scutellated in front, 

 reticulated behind ; the inner claw the strongest and the 

 most curved. The whole length twenty-four to twenty-five 

 inches ; the wing from the anterior bend sixteen inches. 



The female is rather smaller than the male, but other- 

 wise the sexes do not differ much in appearance ; nor does 

 this species assume by age the lighter colours peculiar to 

 the other species of this genus. G. T. Fox, Esq., says 

 of one example which had been kept alive ten years, that 

 the plumage had undergone no change of colour at any of 

 the annual moultings. A specimen brought to Dr. Neill in 

 the summer of 1820, then a nestling, was alive at the 

 Cannon-mills in October 1843, then in his 24th year, but 

 Dr. Neill sent me word at that time, that he feared his old 

 Skua would not survive the winter. The plumage had 

 become very pale, and the head especially greyish white. 



