DUSKY SHEARWATER. 425 



PUFFINUS OBSCURUS. 

 DUSKY SHEARWATER. 



(PLATE 56.) 



Procellaria obscura, Gmel. Syst. Nat. i. p. 559 (1788) ; et auctorum plnrimorum 



(Bonaparte), (Attdubon), (Baird), (Sounders), &c. 

 Nectris obscura (Gmel.), Keys, fy Bias. Wirb. Eur. p. xciv (1840). 

 Puffinus obscurus (Gmel.), Reich. Schwimmvog. pi. vi. figs. 2250, 2251 (1848). 

 Puffinus auduboni, Finsch, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1872, p. 111. 



It is very unfortunate that this species should have received the English 

 name of Dusky Shearwater, a most inappropriate appellation, which has 

 caused some ornithologists to confuse it with the Sooty Shearwater. Its 

 pure white underparts show at once its much closer affinity to the Manx 

 Shearwater than to the Sooty Shearwater, in which the underparts are 

 brown like the back. 



Two instances of the capture of the Dusky Shearwater in our islands 

 entitle it to a place in the British list. A bird of such wandering habits, 

 roaming over thousands of miles of ocean, has probably visited our shores 

 more frequently, but has escaped notice. The first example was sent to 

 Yarrell by Mr. Blackburn, of Valentia Harbour, who stated that it had 

 flown on board a small vessel off the island of Valentia, on the south- 

 west coast of Ireland, on the llth of May, 1853 (Yarrell, Zool. 1853, 

 p. 3947) . The second British example was found dead by a gamekeeper 

 about the 10th of April 1858, on the Earsham estate, within a mile of 

 Bungay in Suffolk (Stevenson, Zool. 1858, p. 6096) : the specimen was 

 lost sight of for some years, but was afterwards traced, thoroughly iden- 

 tified, and exhibited at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London 

 (Stevenson, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1882, p. 421). 



The Dusky Shearwater is a tropical species, breeding both in the Atlantic 

 and the Pacific, represented in the Southern Seas by a smaller race, 

 Puffinus assimilis (measuring only 6^ inches in length of wing) , which may 

 possibly be only subspecifically distinct. In the Northern Seas it is repre- 

 sented by two more distantly allied species, which are slightly larger, and 

 also differ from both the above species in having the brown on the head 

 extending below the eye to the lores and ear-coverts. Of these the Manx 

 Shearwater (P. anglorum) is an Atlantic species, and the Black-vented 

 Shearwater (P. opisthomelas) is a Pacific species. 



The Dusky Shearwater has not yet been recorded from the Indian Ocean. 

 In the North Atlantic it breeds in the Bahamas, the Bermudas, and in 

 many of the islands off the coast of West Africa. In the Pacific it has 



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