172 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
Occasionally the Common Skua may be seen off the Worm’s 
Head, on the coast of Gower. Three examples of Richardson’s 
Skua have been obtained. 
The Manx Shearwater occurs occasionally. 
One specimen of Leach’s Petrel was picked up some years 
ago on the beach at Gileston, and is now in the collection of the 
Rev. H. Morgan-Stratford. 
With that tiny mite of a web-footed bird, the Storm Petrel, 
this list of the rarer Glamorganshire birds closes. Examples of 
the Storm Petrel are not unfrequently driven inland during 
boisterous weather, and a gale in October, 1881, drove many of 
these birds inland, and one was picked up in an exhausted state 
at Llantrissant. 
If any reader of these Notes can add to, or in any way help 
in rendering the avifauna of this county more complete, I should 
indeed be glad, for as yet there is no book published on the 
Birds of Glamorganshire. 


THE STATUS OF THE FIRECREST AS A BRITISH BIRD. 
By J. H. Gurney, Jun., F.Z.S. 
Tue Firecrest was introduced into the list of British Birds 
fifty-seven years ago, by the Rey. Leonard Blomefield (then 
Jenyns), on the strength of an example canght by a cat near 
Cambridge. The bird was a young one, killed in August, and is 
doubtless that described in the following terms on p. ]14 of that 
author’s ‘Manual of British Vertebrate Animals’ :— 
“The young of the year before the first moult is only to be 
distinguished from those of the last species [Goldcrest] by the 
longer and broader bill ; cheeks cinereous, without any appearance 
of the longitudinal streaks.” 
It is scarcely possible that this description can be correct as 
applying to a Firecrest, for Mr. Dresser in the ‘ Birds of Europe’ 
(ii. p. 460), quoting from Naumann, states that the young bird 
just fledged has, on the sides of the head, the black and white 
stripes so characteristic of the Firecrest, like the adult bird, but 
duller; and in a nestling from Sardinia which I examined, at 
least one stripe was apparent. The inference is that Mr. Blome- 
field’s bird was really a young Goldcrest, and this is strengthened 
