164 



Adult in summer (Orkneys). General colour of plumage blackish green, with a silky lustre, the head and 

 neck being more richly glossed with green than the other parts; back, scapulars, and wing-coverts 

 lighter, the feathers narrowly margined with velvety black ; quills and tail black with a faint greenish 

 tinge; on the head, a little below the level of the eye, is a broad tuft of recurved oblong feathers 

 considerably over an inch in length; bill black, with the nail yellowish brown; basal portion and 

 bare part of the chin yellowish, marked with black ; angle of the mouth orange ; bare space round the 

 eye black, with a yellowish spot at the base of the bill ; iris rich green ; legs black. Total length about 

 26 inches, gape 3'6, wing 9 - 9, tail 57, tarsus 2 - 4. 



Adult in winter. Differs from the adult in summer in having the head crestless and a few scattered minute 

 filiform pencil- tipped white plumelets on the neck. 



Young (coast of Sicily). Crown and hind neck dark brown with a greenish tinge, the feathers tipped with 

 pale brown ; upper parts brown with dull greenish brown, the feathers margined with black, many 

 having an external brownish white margin ; rump almost uniform dull greenish ; wing-coverts brown 

 with broad dirty white margins; quills deep brown with a greenish tinge, narrowly margined and 

 tipped with brownish white; chin, upper throat, and underparts generally pure white, neck brownish 

 white; flanks brown; bill dusky brown above, brownish flesh below; bare skin at the base and round 

 the eye dusky yellow ; legs dusky brown. 



Nestling. When first hatched the young are bare and livid blackish, but soon become covered with brownish 

 black down. 



Compared with that of the Cormorant, the range of the present species is somewhat restricted ; 

 for, though common in Northern and Western Europe as well as in the Mediterranean, it is not 

 found further east than the Black Sea. 



In Great Britain the Shag is more frequently seen in the north than the south, and is some- 

 what locally distributed, being less numerous than the Cormorant. In Guernsey, Mr. Cecil Smith 

 informs me, it is very abundant, especially in the breeding-season, occupying every available ledge 

 on all the cliffs ; and the same may be said of Alderney and Sark ; when he was there, in the first 

 week in June 1876, the young were hatched, and were standing on the rocks beside their mothers, 

 appearing nearly as large as they, though not able to fly. It occasionally visits some parts of 

 the south coasts of England, but is said to be wanting on the shores of Kent, Sussex, and on the 

 east coast of England up to Yorkshire ; and Mr. Cecil Smith informs me that on the west coast 

 he does not know of any instance of its occurrence off Somersetshire. On the Northumberland 

 and Durham coasts, however, according to Mr. Hancock, " the Shag is a resident. It breeds 

 rarely at the Fame Islands, where its eggs were taken in June, about the year 1820, by the late 

 Mr. John Laws and the late Mr. K. R. Wingate. George C. Atkinson, Esq., has also taken the 

 eggs of this species at the Fame Islands, and presented them some years ago, along with his 

 valuable collection of eggs, to the Newcastle Museum. Mr. James Sutton informs me, October 1 , 

 1873, that the Shag nested this year on the Fame Islands." 



In Scotland, Mr. Robert Gray writes (B. of W. of Scotl. p. 457), " though less numerous on 

 the western shores of the mainland than the Cormorant, the Shag is abundant in the Outer 

 Hebrides, where it is permanently resident, and to a great extent gregarious. It is found 

 breeding in great numbers in all the caves which intersect the precipitous coasts of Harris 



