132 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS I ZOOLOGY. 



Bill, 2.1 inches. 



Tarsus, 2.4 inches. 



Color. Adult Male. General color, deep sooty brown, darkest on 

 upper parts, wings and tail are of a general lighter shade below. 



Head : Entirely deep sooty brown. 



Neck : Deep sooty brown above, somewhat lighter below. 



Back: Sooty brown, rather lighter than the head, and each feather 

 indistinctly edged with paler brown. Lower back deeper sooty brown. 



Wings : Like the back ; the quills sooty black. 



Tail : Deep sooty brown. 



Lower parts : Sooty brown paler than the prevailing shade above and 

 greyer especially on the throat. Under wing coverts greyish white with 

 dark shafts. 



Bill : Horn color, often lighter at the tip. 



Legs brown. 



Feet brown. 



Iris dark hazel. 



The sexes are similar in size and color. 



Geographical Range. Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. South to Australia 

 and to the Straits of Magellan. Known to breed in the Chatham group 

 of Islands. (Travers, Trans. New Zeal. Inst. V. p. 220). 



The Grey or Sooty Shearwater was not secured or observed by the 

 Princeton Expeditions to Patagonia. The description is based on four 

 individuals in the Princeton University Ornithological Collection nos. 

 8604 to 8607 inclusive, taken off Cape Cod, Massachusetts (20 miles at 

 sea), 1 6 August, 1881 ; supplemented by the series of these birds in the 

 British Museum of Natural History. 



The only record respecting the nidification of this bird I have found 

 (except Mr. Buller's statement that its egg is " white, stained with reddish 

 brown, and measures 3.25 inches in length by 2 inches in breadth") is 

 contained in the following notes by Mr. Travers, who writes (Trans. N. 

 Zeal. Inst. v. p. 220), that it is "common all around the coasts of the 

 Chatham group. It burrows a horizontal hole, from three to four feet 

 deep, and turning slightly to the right or left, in peaty ground. At the 

 extremity of this hole it forms a rude nest composed of twigs and dead 



