Birth. 3947 



Occurrence of a Petrel new to Britain on the West Coast of Ireland. 

 By William Yarrell, Esq., F.L.S., &c. 



Ryder Street, St. James's, 



June 14, 1853. 

 Dear Sir, 



In answer to your request on the subject of the petrel 

 exhibited at the meeting of the Linnean Society on the 7th of June, I 

 send you the following particulars. 



This interesting bird, new, as I believe, to the British Islands, was 

 brought to me by B. Blackburn, Esq., of Valentia Harbour, in the 

 county of Kerry ; who afterwards sent me the following note of its 

 occurrence. 



" The petrel which I left with you this morning, flew on board a 

 small sloop off the Island of Valentia, on the South-west coast of 

 Ireland, late in the evening of the 11th of May last. Mrs. Blackburn 

 had never observed it before on our coast, and we concluded it to be 

 the Puffinus obscurus of Temminck and Gould." 



" It made no attempt either to run or fly away, and suffered itself to 

 be handled without exhibiting alarm ; and though apparently strong 

 and vigorous, manifested quite an Oriental resignation to its fate." 



The Puffinus obscurus, or dusky petrel, is included by the late 

 William Macgillivray in his ' Manual of British Ornithology,' (part 2, 

 Water Birds, p. 263) ; with the following remark : — " This species 

 belongs to the Southern and Tropical regions of the globe, although 

 individuals have sometimes been found far North." Reference is also 

 made to his * History of British Birds,' vol. v., but no page is given. 

 The fifth volume of this latter work was not published until ten years 

 after the publication of the Manual, and does not contain any notice 

 of this bird. 



The Dusky Petrel of Latham (Syn.) and Pennant (Arct. Zool.) is 

 not the Puffinus obscurus of more modern authors, since they give it 

 a length of 13 inches ; and is probably the Manks Petrel {Puffinus 

 Anglorum) of Ray : but Latham, in his Synopsis (vol. vi. p. 417), re- 

 fers to a petrel without a name, measuring less by 2 inches in length, 

 in the Leverian Museum, said to have come from King George's 

 Sound ; and mentions also that it inhabits Christmas Island. The 

 Puffinus obscurus measures 1 1 inches in its whole length, and 6f from 

 the bend of the wing to the end of the longest quill-feather. Six spe- 

 cimens examined gave the same results. 



