THE ZooLocist—Aueust, 1876. 5025 
this year (S. S. 4953). Though killed some time before my visit 
to the islands, I mention it here, as Mr. Couch’s note leaves it 
rather doubtful whether the bird was an Iceland or a Greenland 
falcon, and until I saw it I had some doubts about it myself; it is, 
however, an Iceland falcon, an adult bird, and Mr. Couch informed 
me proved on dissection to be a male. It was killed on the little 
island of Herm on the 11th of April. Another bird of the same 
kind was said to have been seen with it: the pair were occasionally 
seen about for some time before this one was shot, The island 
of Herm is about three miles from Guernsey, and is rented 
by a gentleman who preserves the game. This game proved a 
great attraction to the two falcons, and the keeper saw either this 
one or its companion kill several pheasants before he shot it. 
Although the Channel Islands are an extreme southern latitude 
for the Iceland falcon—or, indeed, for either of the three white 
northern falcons—-to be found in, even as an occasional straggler, 
would it be too great a stretch of imagination to suppose that 
these birds, having wandered so far from their home,—and finding 
pheasant a good substitute for plarmigan, and the season getting 
on,—might, if unmolested, have remained to breed? 
T also saw at Mr. Couch’s a female hen harrier, which had been 
killed at Herm about the same time as the Iceland falcon. There 
were also in Mr. Couch’s shop three bartailed godwits, which he 
had stuffed for the keeper at Herm: these had all been shot in 
that island in May, out of a considerable flock which seems to 
have passed over the islands about that time: one of these birds 
was in the most perfect breeding plumage, the other two were 
hardly so far advanced. 
As we went outside the Caskets on the passage to Guernsey, 
there was very little to be seen in the bird way—only a few puffins 
near those rocks: either of the other passages between the Caskets 
and Alderney would have been more interesting. 
On the rocks at the south end of Guernsey there was a large 
colony of herring gulls who had taken possession, for breeding pur- 
poses, of all the available portions of the rocks not previously 
occupied by the shags, who were also very numerous. The herring 
gull appeared to be the only gull breeding here: I did not see 
even a single lesser blackback amongst this colony of herring gulls. 
By far the greater part, if not all, the shags had hatched, and some 
of the young were nearly as large as their mothers, who stood 
