Order PKOCELLAKIIEOEMES.] 



[Family PUFFINID.E. 



PUFFINUS ASSIMILIS 



(ALLIED SHEAEWATER.) 



Puffinus assimilis, Gould; Buller, Birds of New Zealand, vol. ii., p. 239. 



A fledgling which I have received from Sunday Island (one of the Kermadecs) is a very pretty 

 object. The plumage is as in the adult, except that the longer wing-coverts and inner secondaries 

 are minutely tipped with white ; but the long, fluffy, dark-grey down still adheres to the sides of 

 the body, and as the bird squats it looks as if reposing in a luxurious nest of down, which projects 

 an inch or more from the body, and has a charming effect. 



A specimen of the adult in the flesh, received from the Hauraki Gulf, has greenish- grey feet, 

 with yellow inter-digital webs, marked with black on the outer edge ; bill bluish-black. 



From Cuvier Island, Mr. David Lyall wrote to me: "I am sending you a little box containing 

 a Petrel found on this island, which I have not been able to identify. [This proved to be Puffinus 

 assimilis^] This island is not so good for birds as Stephen's Island, where I was stationed before, 

 for the ground is very hard and dry, so that there are few places where the birds can burrow. 

 Cats are here and all the land-birds have disappeared." 



Of this species Captain Hutton writes : — 



It seems that the Kermadec-Island birds are smaller than those from New Zealand, for Sir W. Buller 

 remarks, that the bird in the British Museum, obtained by Mr. John Macgillivray on Baoul Island (= Sunday 

 Island) is somewhat smaller than the New Zealand birds, thus agreeing with the present specimen. In New 

 Zealand this species is common in the Hauraki Gulf, but I have not seen it south of Auckland. In the south 

 it is replaced by the larger species P. gavia (Forst.), which is most abundant about Cook's Strait and 

 diminishes in number both to the north and to the south. Sir W. Buller, in his ' Birds of New Zealand,' 2nd 

 edition, vol. ii., p. 236, considers the bird from the Great Barrier Island which I called P. assimilis 

 (' Trans. N.Z. Inst.,' vol. i., p. 161) to be P. gavia, but this is not correct. The mistake, however, is my 

 fault, for when in my 'Catalogue of the Birds of New Zealand' (Wellington, 1872, p. 79), I showed that 

 P. gavia of Forster — which had up till then been thought to be an (Estrelata—w&s a species of Puffinus, 

 I confused it with P. assimilis, although this species appears to be distinct. Of this species Mr. Cheeseman 

 says that great numbers were breeding on Meyer Island in August, 1887. They dig out burrows for 

 their nests, often of considerable length. 



PUFFINUS OB S GURUS. 



(DUSKY SHEAEWATEE.) 



Puffinus obscurus, Bonap. ; Buller, Birds of New Zealand, vol. ii., p. 238. 



No further specimen has been recorded. The only claim, therefore, of this species to be 

 reo-arded as a New Zealand bird rests on the single skin in Messrs. Salvin and G-odman's 

 collection " said to have come from New Zealand " (pp. cit, p. 238). 



A male specimen was picked up dead by a gamekeeper on the Earsham estate (near Bungay) 

 in Norfolk, about the 10th or 12th April, 1858. (See Zoologist for that year, p. 6,096.) 





