88 ZOOLOGICAL LOG OF OMOND HOUSE 



opens into Jessie Bay. All are single eggs. Eleven snowy petrels' eggs got also. 

 Numerous terns nesting there but most have not laid, and only one egg was found. 

 One gull's nest with three eggs which were well incubated. 



A small petrel similar to a Wilson's petrel was caught. From a rock about 1 5 feet 

 above the sea I heard a low whistling note, and proceeding to investigate I found in a 

 crack what I took to be a pair of Wilson's petrels, and managed to catch one of them. 

 Two hopelessly broken eggs were lying at the mouth of the crack, and one other one 

 not so badly broken was brought away. It had been partly incubated. The bird was 

 different from a Wilson's petrel, in having entirely black feet, being white on the under 

 surface, and having feathers on back slightly tinged with white and a longer and more 

 hooked upper mandible and a strongly up-turned tubi-nostril. 1 



In evening caught a real Wilson's petrel in the cliffs above the house where they 

 were nesting at a height of 150 to 200 feet. Three nests were all found in small cracks 

 or crevices in the rocks, and to reach the one I caught I had to dig away both rock and 

 earth before I could get my arm in. All three nests contained broken, partly incubated 

 old eggs, and in one a dead young bird was got of last or some previous year. It seems 

 as if they returned to the same places to nest, and as if last (or some previous year) the 

 birds had been caught by an early onset of snow which stopped incubation. 



From 7 P.M. to 11 P.M. numerous Wilson's petrels may be seen flitting about the 

 cliffs here and over the water, much more abundantly than during the day-time, when 

 only a single one is occasionally seen. 



Shags, skuas, nellies, paddies and three kinds of penguins seen about as usual. On 

 The Beach black-throated penguins are very common, gentoos fairly common and ringed 

 penguins rather uncommon, probably because their rookery is much further off. 



Dec. 6th. There was a very low tide to-day, so we went collecting in shore pools on 

 the west side of the head of Scotia Bay (near the magnetic stick). Almost no weed in 

 these pools, except for a few pieces of dulce ; weed begins in about one fathom below low- 

 water mark. Notwithstanding this, a pretty good haul was made on and under the 

 stones of the pools. Temperature of the pools varied from 30 to 32, being rather 

 warmer than the open water of the bay. 



Our collections were as follows: Four fish, small specimens of same species that is 

 very common in the trap at about 10 fathoms; limpets, by far the most abundant of 

 any species in the fauna, while small silvery white gasteropods (" Silver Willies") were 

 about the next most plentiful, several other species of gasteropods and one or two small 

 lamellibraiifhs ; two small nudibranchs of the same species as got in dredge from 

 10 fathoms; crustaceans of numerous small forms chiefly amphipods ; star-fish, small 

 orange-red form pretty abundant and one yellow form, also common in 10 fathoms, 

 one small species (about f-in.) red-brown, centre fading to white at tips of arms ; one 

 holothurian, a species common in 10 fathoms; chaetopods, one very small form; 

 polyzoa, one orange-coloured calcareous form encrusting the stones in scalloped pieces, 



1 Fregetta melanngaster. 



