Tue Zootocist—Aveust, 1876. 5027 
choughs and a few oystercatchers breeding in the rocky part of the 
island. 
On the 10th I went over to Sark, but did not see much there— 
a few puffins on the passage, and a large number of herring gulls 
and shags breeding in every available place on the rocks; there 
were a few lesser blackbacks about, but very few in comparison 
to the herring gulls. There were innumerable swifts about the 
Coupée, and a few choughs; these were not so numerous as in 
Guernsey, but jackdaws were more so. 
On the 13th I went to Alderney. Herring gulls and shags were 
breeding in considerable numbers about the rocks, but very few 
lesser blackbacks amongst them, and I could not be sure that 
these few had nests. The jackdaws seem quite to have taken the 
place of the choughs here: I did not see a single chough: the 
jackdaws, however, were numerous. 
On the 14th I paid a visit to the little island of Barhoe, on the 
other side of the Swinge passage. I went here with the idea of 
hunting up the stormy petrels and their‘nests; but in this I was 
very unsuccessful, only finding one broken egg and part of a dead 
bird. I did find out, however, what had become of the lesser 
blackbacks: these gulls were now very conspicuous by their 
absence, both in Guernsey and Sark, and even in Alderney itself, 
though at other times of the year there were generally a fair 
proportion mixed with the herring gulls; but at Barhoe, a small 
rather flat rocky island, they had congregated in large numbers, 
almost to the total exclusion of the herring gulls, of which there 
were only two or three scattered pairs to be seen. The nests of 
the lesser blackbacks were scattered all over the island, some being 
placed on the bare rock and some among the bracken and thrift, 
the only vegetation. Scanty, however, as was this vegetation, it 
afforded a precarious subsistence to a good many rabbits, who 
bred partly in the crevices of the rocks and partly in burrows 
made in the shallow soil out of which the bracken and thrift grew. 
So thickly strewn were the gulls’ nests about the island that it was 
difficult to walk amongst the fern without treading on the eggs, 
and the white heads and yellow bills appeared every where craning 
up to look at the intruder. The eggs varied very much both as to 
ground colour and markings; some were a pale blue, some olive- 
green and some brown: the pale blue and a few of the greenish 
ones were freckled all over with small dark marks, almost or quite 
