BLA CK SKIMMER, OR SHEER WA TER. , 8 1 



BLACK SKIMMER, OE SHEERWATER. 



, (Wiynchops nigra.) 



PLATE LX.— Fig. 4. 



Arct. Zool. No. 445. — Catesby, i. 90. — Le Bec-en-ciseaux, Buff. viii. 454, tab. 36. 



Peale's Museum, No. 3530. 



P.HYNCHOPS NIGRA.- Linnaeus.* 



Khynchops nigra, Steph. Cont. Sh. Zool. vol. xiii. p. 136. — Guv. Beg. Anim. i. 

 522. — Bonap. Synop.—Less. Man. cVOm. ii. p. 385. 



This truly singular fowl is the only species of its tribe 

 hitherto discovered. Like many others, it is a bird of pas- 

 sage in the United States, and makes its first appearance on the 

 shores of New Jersey early in May. It resides there, as well 

 as along the whole Atlantic coast, during the summer ; and 

 retires early in September. Its favourite haunts are low 

 sandbars raised above the reach of the summer tides, and 

 also dry flat sands on the beach in front of the ocean. On 

 such places it usually breeds along the shores of Cape May, 

 in New Jersey. On account of the general coldness of the 

 spring there, the sheerwater does not begin to lay until early 

 in June, at which time these birds form themselves into small 



* This very curious genus is composed, according to ornithologists, 

 of two species, — that of our author and the R. flavirostris, Vieillot ; 

 though I suspect that another is involved in the birds which I have 

 seen from the Southern Ocean. In form and plumage they bear a 

 strong resemblance to the terns, but are at once distinguished by the 

 bill, which will show the greatest instance of the lateral development 

 of that member. The manners of these birds, in adaptation to the 

 structure of the bill and mouth, are noted by our author ; and it seems 

 generally thought that their practice of skimming and cutting the 

 water, as it were in search of food, is their only mode of procuring sub- 

 sistence. The immense flocks of this species, mingled with gulls and 

 terns, with their peculiar mode of feeding on some bivalve shells, 

 is thus described by Lesson, and shows that sometimes a more substantial 

 food is required, for the procuring of which the form of their bill is no 

 less beautifully adapted, and that the opinion of Wilson is at variance 

 with reality : — " II formait avec les mouettes et quelque autres oiseaux 



