98 



General Notes. [January 



September, 1S77, bj Mr. George B Dunbar. I have been unable to ascer- 

 tain the exact date of its capture, but it was little later than the 7th of the 

 month, doubtless within two or three days of that date. The bird, which 

 is in immature plumage, was in company with another apparently of the 

 same species and age, as no difference could be detected between them. It 

 was shot on Screwdriver Pond, a pond of about a mile in length, half a 

 mile from Lake Bomaseen, which is a body of water some nine miles 

 long, situated about tenniiles east of the southern end of Lake Champlain. 

 The occurrence so far inland of a species that usually is found only off 

 our coast, seems to demand some explanation, but that which always first 

 suggests itself in the case of sea-birds taken in the interior, viz., that the 

 bird has been driven from its accustomed haunts by a storm, seems in this 

 case to be insufficient. Although the U. S. Signal Service recorded "heavy 

 northeast gales" as prevailing along the New England coast during the 

 7th, 8th, and 9th of the month, yet the chances are extremel}' small that 

 two individuvals of the same species should have been blown by the same 

 gales to the same pond at a distance of a hundred and thirty miles from 

 the coast. I should prefer to suppose that in their youth and inexperience 

 they had wandered in company from the Gulf of St. Lawrence up the St. 

 Lawrence River, and then, guided only by an instinct that impelled them 

 southward, they had followed up the Champlain Valley to the point where 

 they were found — Charle.s F. Ba.tchelder, Cambridge, Mass. 



A newly-discovered Breeding Place of Leach's Petrel (^Cymochorea 

 leucorrhoa (Vieill.) Coues) in Scotland. — A friend t)f mine, Mr. John 

 Swinburne, when on an ornithological yachting cruise during the past 

 summer, visited the little-known island ofRona, lying aboutforty miles to 

 the northeast of the Island of Lewis, in the Hebrides, which had not been 

 previously visited, so far as known, by any ornithologist. He found about 

 twelve or fifteen species of birds inhabiting the island, chiefly, of course, sea- 

 birds. Among them he found, on 20th June, the Fork-tailed Petrel breed- 

 ing in considerable numbers, and took a number of their eggs, which were 

 quite fi-esh. He tells me he found them breeding in burrows in compa- 

 nies, several pairs of birds inhabiting the same main burrow, off which 

 each pair had a separate and smaller burrow formed at right angles to 

 the main one, at the extremity of w'hich their single e^^s, was laid. The 

 only European breeding place of this species hitherto known is St. Kilda, 

 where Sir William Milne found their nests in 1847. The common Stormy 

 Petrel, Procellaria felagica, also breeds at St. Kilda, although it does not 

 appear to do^so on Rona, so far as observed by Mr. Swinburne. — ^John 

 J. Dalgleish, Edinburgh. Scotland. 



Black-throated Auk (^Synt/ilibor/nnnp/iiis antiquiis) in Wisconsin. — -If 

 mv readers will look at a map of North America they will be surprised, to 

 say the least, that a North Pacific sea-bird should find its way, even by 

 accident, to the State of Wisconsin. The great range of the Rocky 

 Mountains, extending to the verj' verge of the Arctic Ocean, acts as a 



