440 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



ARCTIC SKUA. 



Stercorarius crepidatus (Gmel.). 



Under a name which indicates a popular fallacy regarding 

 the habits of the bird, but which is hardly fitted for polite ears, 

 this Skua is well known to Whitehaven fishermen, who not un- 

 frequently see one or two individuals in company with the 

 smaller Gulls and Terns, upon whose exertion the Skuas chiefly 

 depend for their subsistence. It has occurred on more occasions 

 than one in the interior of Lakeland, in fact upon the borders 

 of Cumberland and Northumberland, having probably followed 

 one or other of the rivers of the latter county from the sea. As 

 lately as October 1887 a young Richardson's Skua was shot 

 near Alston, in which neighbourhood Green well obtained a 

 similar bird on October 1, 1857. Mr. Horrocks possesses a fine 

 old bird, light breasted, which was also shot near Alston. Mr. 

 Graham of Cockermouth forwarded for identification the wings 

 of a young bird of this Skua, which had been shot at Tallentire 

 about Christmas 1890. But allowing for such exceptions as 

 these, it would appear that this Skua is rarely met with except 

 on our coast-line. Mr. Nicol believes that some of these birds 

 migrate eastward in spring vid the Sol way Firth. On the 20th 

 of May 1887, after a gale from the N.W., he and two other 

 fishermen saw twelve of these Skuas pass close to them, flying 

 up the Sol way in an easterly direction. At the same time it 

 should be understood that odd stragglers, obviously not breeding- 

 birds, pass the summer months on the Sol way, not perhaps 

 every year, but from year to year. They are generally wild and 

 keep out in the open sea except after heavy gales. A fisherman 

 named Johnston, whose cottage is close to the sea- shore, between 

 Allonby and Silloth, is the only man who has sent me local 

 specimens of Richardson's Skua. In 1889 he shot an old bird 

 of the dark form, after a heavy westerly gale, while the Skua 

 was hotly chevying a Black-headed Gull above the beach. It 

 proved to be'moulting on the 9th of October. The plumage 

 was much infested with parasites. A bird which he shot on the 

 4th of October 1890 was still more advanced in moult, but this 



