308 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



arrived by May 29th, the majority putting in an appearance during 

 the first week in June. On the Moie de la Bretagne, where we 

 lunched, a nest was found containing one egg. Within a few days 

 our boatmen said there would be as many as two hundred of them 

 frequenting this tumbled mass of rocks, which lies off the western coast 

 of Little Sark. 



Oystercatchee (Hcematoims ostralegus). — A fairly common and 

 always pretty shore-bird in Sark, and breeding on the lower lying 

 rocks of L'Etac ; also on Moie de la Bretagne, where I found a 

 nest containing two eggs. The fragments of a third were lying 

 some few yards away, probably having been pilfered by Crows. 

 This bird also breeds on Grande and Petite Moies, but found no nests 

 there. 



Kittiwake (Passa tridactyla). — Breeding in considerable numbers 

 at the Moie de Mouton wherever a suitable ledge in the perpendicular 

 cliff permitted. In all cases their nests were totally inaccessible. 



Herring-Gull (Larus argentatus). — The commonest of all the Gulls, 

 breeding in incredible numbers at a great many gulleries all around 

 the coast, but in no case was it possible to approach the nests from the 

 land, and none too easy from a boat. Examined some thirty nests at 

 the various points touched at during our trip round Sark in a small 

 boat. All of them were large, i. e. with wide diameters, but otherwise 

 slight structures of dead grass and other withered herbage and sea- 

 weed, and placed in a hollow among the rocks, or in thick grass 

 growing up the cliffs. Of all the nests I saw only one had more than 

 two eggs, and that was a Lesser Black-back Herring-Gull's nest, con- 

 taining one egg of the former bird and two of the latter. This seems 

 rather curious, as the clutches are usually given as three, and that 

 laying, generally speaking, was finished, I am perfectly sure, as the 

 parents had all begun incubation, and some of the eggs I procured 

 contained an embryo in a slightly advanced stage of incubation. At 

 very low tide, when an expanse of sand is laid bare, the Herring-Gull 

 is very fond of probing about for Sand-eels, and as I learn the Herring 

 is never caught in these seas, the name gained from its habit in follow- 

 ing shoals of Herrings becomes a misnomer. 



Lesser Black-backed Gull (L.fuscus). — Breeding in numbers, but 

 is not so common a species as the last named. There seems a strong 

 social instinct between these birds and the Herring-Gull, nesting near 

 one another, and even in the same nest, as already noted. The nests 

 of the two species are to all intents and purposes identical both in 

 position and materials, and the eggs themselves are not easy to 



