GREAT SHEARWATER. 417 



PUFFINUS MAJOR. 

 GREAT SHEARWATER. 



(PLATE 56.) 



Procellaria gravis, O'Reilly, Greenl. and N;W. Passage, p. 140 (1818). 



Puffinus major, Faber, Prodr. Isl, Orn. p. 56 (1822) ; et auctorum plurimomm 



Bonaparte, Lawrence, Baird, Coues, Dresser, Saunders, &c. 

 Ardenna major (Faber), Reich. Syst. Av. pi. 14. fig. 770 (1844). 

 Procellaria major (Faber), Schkyel, Mus. Pays-Bos, Procell. p. 72 (1862). 



The Great Shearwater was for many years confused with the Sooty 

 Shearwater, Gould and other ornithologists maintaining that the two 

 birds were merely light and dark varieties of one species, which they sup- 

 posed to vary in the colour of the underparts, as the Fulmar and the 

 Pomarine and Richardson's Skuas are known to do. 



The Great Shearwater is a tolerably frequent visitor to the British 

 coasts ; and probably its preference for the open ocean is the cause of its 

 comparative abundance in the extreme south-west of England. It is some- 

 times seen in large numbers off the Scilly Islands and the Cornish coasts, 

 but elsewhere it is accidental and irregular in its appearance. Gray 

 gives no record of this bird in Scotland ; and on the east coast of England 

 it is rare, but examples have been taken on the Yorkshire and Lincoln- 

 shire coasts. Only very few instances have been recorded of its occurrence 

 in Ireland; but it doubtless occurs more frequently off the south and 

 west coasts of that country than in any other part of our islands. 



It seems probable that the Greater Shearwater is confined to South 

 Greenland during the breeding- season, bat the identification of the eggs 

 obtained there is not very satisfactory. When the breeding-season is over, 

 it is a very common bird in mid Atlantic, occasionally straying to Iceland, 

 the Faroes, and the Norwegian coast, and still more rarely to the south- 

 west European coasts. It is more abundant on the Atlantic coasts of the 

 American continent, especially those of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, 

 and occasionally wanders as far as the Gulf of Mexico. A solitary ex- 

 ample was obtained near Cape Horn ; but its alleged occurrence in the 

 Cape seas appears to be an error, the Sooty Shearwater being the species 

 found in that region. An allied species, differing in having the under 

 tail-coverts pure white, and in other more important particulars, breeds on 

 the Azores and on various islands in the Mediterranean. It cannot be 

 regarded as only a southern race of the Greater Shearwater, and must be 

 considered specifically distinct under the name of Puffinus kuhli. 



