40 



BULLETIN" 292, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



to visit the lightship and spend the winter in the immediate vicinity 

 for 24 consecutive years, outliving all the lightship attendants who 

 first fed it. During the last years it arrived October 5, 1890; Octo- 

 ber 12, 1891; September 28, 1892; October 7, 1893; October 2, 1894; 

 and October 2, 1895. It was last seen in spring April 6, 1892; April 7, 

 1893; April 5, 1894; April 6, 1895, and April 7, 1896— a remarkably 

 uniform date of departure. 



VEGA GULL. Larus vegx Palm£n. 



Knowledge concerning the distribution and migration of the Yega 

 gull is very limited. It was originally described from specimens 

 taken at Pidlin, on the northern coast of Siberia, where the ship 

 Vega had wintered, and it has since become known along that coast 



from the Taimyr Peninsula 

 east to Bering Strait, on 

 the Liakoff Islands, and at 

 Plover Bay, where it is 

 common, and also along the 

 coasts of Kamchatka and 

 the Sea of Okhotsk. A 

 specimen now in the United 

 States National Museum 

 was taken by Nelson on 

 Diomede Island in Bering 

 Strait, in July, 1881. In 

 migration and winter this 

 gull has been taken on the 

 coasts of Japan and China, 

 south to Formosa and the 

 Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands. 

 Information concerning 

 the occurrence of the Vega 

 gull on the eastern side of Bering Strait is less satisfactory: Under 

 the name of Larus borealis, Baird notes a specimen from Norton 

 Sound, and the catalogue of the United States National Museum re- 

 cords that it was taken by Bischoff at St. Michael in May; Nelson 

 records a specimen of Larus cacliinnans that was brought to him at St. 

 Michael, October 16, 1880, and thinks that he saw the same species on 

 several other occasions, and that it occurs on the Alaska coast from 

 Kotzebue Sound to the mouth of the Yukon. Both these names, 

 borealis and cachinnans, refer to Lams vegse, whose occurrence on the 

 Alaskan coast was made certain in 1910 by the capture of four speci- 

 mens at Nome, September 2-1 4, (Thayer) . One of these was identified 

 at the Biological Survey. Whether or not the species breeds to the 

 eastward of Bering Strait remains for future determination. 



Fig. 20.— Vega gull (Larus vcgsc). 



