Order PEOCELLARIIFOEMES.] 



[Family PUFFINIDJE. 



(ESTEELATA GULA1US. 



(MOTTLED PETEEL.) 



(Estrelata affinis, Buller, Birds of New Zealand, vol. ii., p. 223. 

 Procellaria gularis, Peale, U.S. Expl. Exped., p. 299 (1858). 



The bird of the first year differs from the adult in being generally darker in plumage. The whole 

 of the upper surface, the sides of the breast, the sides of the body, flanks and abdomen, dark slaty- 

 grey, the feathers very minutely margined with paler. Chinpure white ; lores, lower sides of face, 

 fore-neck, breast, and under tail-coverts white, varied with slaty-grey, in freckled wavy lines 

 on the breast. All the median wing-coverts are stained with brown; the inner webs of all the 

 quills pure white, as also are the larger under wing-coverts. Bill black; legs and feet yellowish- 

 brown (in dried specimen). 



I have in my collection a pair of these birds brought from the Auckland Islands. There is no 

 appreciable difference in the plumage of the two sexes; but in the male bird the speckled markings 

 on the forehead are more conspicuous, whilst there is a richer tinge of brown on the arm of the 

 fore-wing. I have received several specimens from the provincial districts of Canterbury and 

 Otago. The characters by which I distinguished CE. affinis are constant in all these examples. 

 Dr. Otto Finsch, without seeing the bird, proposed to unite it to CEstrelata mollis ; but the late 

 Mr. Osbert Salvin, our great authority on Petrels, on comparing my bird with the large series 

 of the latter species in the British Museum, unhesitatingly agreed with me that it was quite 

 distinct ; but he suggested that it might prove to be the same as (E. gularis (Peale)) of which 

 an unique example existed in the United States. On comparing this species with a specimen 

 of (E. mollis from Sunda}^ Island, the following external differences are at once manifest : 

 the bird is somewhat smaller; the upper surface is slaty-grey, instead of blackish-brown; 

 the lower part of breast and abdomen are dark cinerous, with barred markings on the sides 

 of the body, instead of this surface being almost entirely white; the tail-coverts are white in their 

 whole extent, instead of being slaty-grey ; there is a broad blackish band along the edge of 

 the wing, within which the entire lining is pure white, instead of being grey and white 

 intermixed, and the inner vanes of the primaries are pure white, except at the tips ; the 

 legs, instead of being distinctly " sandalled," as in the other species, are dull-yellow, with 

 brown toes and interdigital webs. 



Later on, however, Mr. Salvin wrote in the ' Catalogue of Birds ' (vol. xxv., p. 415) : — 



With Mr. Rothschild's permission, I sent a New Zealand specimen of (E. affinis (Bailer) to Washington, to 

 be compared with Peale's type of (E. gularis. Mr. Ridgway writes to me concerning them as follows : 

 'I have carefully compared the bird (i.e. (E. affinis) with the types of (E. gularis (Peale) and (E. fisheri 

 (Ridgw.), and have no doubt whatever as to its being of the same species as the former, as you supposed it to 

 be. The type of (E. gularis has the plumage saturated with oil from the skin, and is therefore considerably 

 discoloured, the upper parts being much darkened, and the grey of the under parts browner than in the 

 Rothschild specimens. Making due allowance, however, for this, the plumage is practically identical ; while 

 the measurements (which were taken, the two specimens one immediately after the other) are as near the 

 same as possible.' 



Mr. Cheeseman showed me, at the Auckland Museum, a fine specimen of this Petrel 

 which he had obtained from Taupe. And Mr. Percy Seymour, writing from Preservation 



