400 LARID^. 



All Mr. Yarrell says of the L. parasiticus as British, is, that — 

 " An adult specimen, killed in this country, is preserved in the 

 British Museum ; and the Zoological Society, in 1832, received 

 the species from Orkney. -J^- ■^ -J^- Young birds have been killed 

 in the vicinity of the Tyne and on the coast of Durham, in the 

 month of September; and Mr. John Hancock, of Newcastle- 

 upon-Tyne, obtained a mature individual that was shot near 

 Whitburn, in Durham, at the end of October 1837'^ (p. 495). 



To myself, this is the best-known species of Lestris, and it 

 was the first to come under my observation both in Belfast and 

 Dublin. A beautiful adult male — now preserved in the Belfast 

 Museum — was shot near Holy wood, Belfast Bay, on the 12th of 

 September, 1822, in the presence of my friend, William Sin- 

 claire, Esq. ; and on the 21st of October that year an immature 

 bird fell to my own gun on the shore there — at Holywood rabbit- 

 warren. I was but a juvenile shooter, and it was my first victim 

 killed on the wing, but certainly not after the most approved 

 fashion. Having observed it coming towards me, my gun was 

 pointed upwards, and I waited until the poor skua, flying very 

 leisurely, came innocently almost right above my head, when, as 

 it was about to cross my barrel, the trigger was pulled, and it 

 came down " stone-dead.^^ The late Mr. John Montgomery, a 

 keen observer of birds, and who formed a collection of native 

 species, noted the adult specimen alluded to as the " arctic gull, 

 Lestris parasiticus." Under that name, it appears by a note in 

 bis MS., that in August 1824 two of these birds were sent to 

 him from Dundrum (Down) ; to which it is added, that they were 

 both in the plumage of the black-toed gull of Bewick.^ One 

 of them lived for a month, by being fed on bread and milk : 

 one certainly (now in the Belfast Museum), and probably the other 

 also, was the true L. parasiticus. Dr. J. D. Marshall procured, on 

 the 13th of September, 1831, an adult male bird of this species 

 wliich was wounded off Holywood, Belfast Bay, in which locality 



* Bewick's " Black-toed Gull" is L. Richardsonii, but its plumage (and that 

 ouly is mentioned in the MS. ; no dimensions being given) will serve for immature 

 L. jjarasiticus almost as well. 



