AN AUTUMN VISIT TO SFTTZBERGEN. 485 



Richardson's Skua, Stercorarius crepidatus, Vieillot; Nor- 

 wegian, "Tyvjo."* — There were several in the neighbourhood 

 of Bear Island on Sept. 1st;- two or three on the 3rd, midway 

 between Bear Island and South Cape ; two off Whale Point, 

 Edge's Land, on the 5th ; and others every now and then after- 

 wards. The last we saw were two or three some few miles north 

 of the Norwegian coast, on Oct. 2nd. A bird of the year, shot on 

 Sept. loth, is very different from the specimen described by 

 Dresser (' Birds of Europe'), having no " warm ochreous" colour 

 on the crown (or elsewhere), but agrees very tolerably with the 

 description in Yarrell (Brit. Birds, 3rd edit. p. 633), except that 

 it has a small light-coloured patch immediately under the lower 

 mandible, and the lower part of the breast and the belly are light 

 coloured. 



Fulmar Petrel, Fulmarus glacialis, Dresser (' Birds of Europe ') ; 

 Norwegian, " Hav Hest." — Began to see Fulmars as we cleared 

 the Norwegian coast, on August 27th, and they were numerous 

 by a few hours later, when we had passed the last point of the 

 coast; after that we saw each day a varying number, which 

 decreased as we approached the Norwegian coast on our home- 

 ward passage, and we saw the last — a solitary bird — two hours 

 before sighting land on October 3rd. Out of the thousands of 

 Fulmars met with in 1881 I came to the conclusion that we had 

 not met with so much as one fully adult example. This voyage 

 I saw several, and brought home one example that I supposed to 

 be adult ; but even this does not agree with the descriptions in 

 Yarrell (3rd edit.) and Dresser. The bill is very slightly lighter- 

 coloured than that of the apparently youngest specimen brought 

 home in 1881; head and neck, all round, dirty white; breast, 

 belly, and all the under surface of the body, the same — doubtless 

 partly the result of staining, but the feathers could never, I think, 

 have been "pure white" (as Yarreli's description); tail-coverts 

 very light pearl-grey ; tail itself almost white, but with a tinge of 

 pearl-grey; the back and wings a lighter shade than my former 

 specimens, but hardly "pearl-grey" — a "dirty pearl-grey" perhaps 

 expresses it ; the tips of the primaries darker, not differing from 

 the other specimens. 



* The name " Struntjager," mentioned by Nordenskiold, is known to the 

 ice-sea men, but I never heard any name but " Tyvjo" used. 



