3810 The Zoologist — January, 1874. 



numbers of ihem flock together fishing for sessile-eyed Crustacea. 

 We took their eggs in Wiide, Treureuberg and Loaime Bays and 

 Moffen Island, at which last place screaming young ones were 

 running wildly about the beach with no one to look after them. 

 They were not in schools, as little seals of their age would have 

 been. When they have eggs, the old birds fly at all intruders, 

 making a noise like castanets while they dart at your head. They 

 are not in dread even of skuas, should they threaten too near an 

 approach to the place of incubation — one cannot, even in courtesy, 

 call it a nest. During the intervals of fishing they may often be 

 seen resting in small groups upon the ice in reclining attitudes. 



Pagophila ehurnea (Snow Bird). — We could not get any snow- 

 bird's eggs, though places where they breed were visited by 

 us. In Wiide Bay and Cape Oetker some of the nests seemed 

 accessible, but we had not suflicient time to endeavour to reach 

 them. The crew were never tired of shooting at them whenever 

 they had a chance of being able to kill more than one bird at a 

 shot; and opportunities for doing this seemed to occur throughout 

 the day and night whenever we killed a seal or morse and left its 

 krang on the ice near the ship. Sometimes they were shot on the 

 water as they were swimming and fishing for Crustacea or Clione 

 borealis. In all fifty or sixty of them must have been killed. In 

 the days when our ancestors subsisted upon salt shee]) during the 

 winter, and required the assistance of a servant every night to 

 conduct them in safety to bed, snow-birds must have lived in a 

 most recherche style." " Food, according to Captain Sabine, 

 blubber and the flesh of whales," — such was their diet in the good 

 old times. Now-a-days they are so reduced in circumstances as to 

 be thankful for shrimps, and to be not above soliciting small 

 gratuities from their neighbours. Their attitude while resting on 

 the ice forms a pretty contrast with that of the recumbent terns. 

 Snow-birds, when they alight, either walk or stand still ; they do 

 not lie down. As to where they walk, that is a matter about which 

 they are not over particular. We saw some at Lommc Bay, 

 seemingly quite at home, very far within the interior of White 

 Whale's krangs, from whence they would now and then emerge 

 with their heads covered with blood. 



Rissa tridnctyla (Kittiwake Gull).— The cliffs of Carl's Island, 

 in Hinlopen Straits, are frequented by killiwakes and glaucous 

 gulls, who live there in separate communities not far apart. 



