236 
BIRDS. 
356. Stercorarius crepidatus {Banks). Richardson's Skua. 
Autumn visitant ; breeding in one place in the county only, 
as far as is known to us ; a pair, and no more, coming to 
the same spot year after year. 
Stray examples have occurred in the west, but there are 
no known breeding-sites. We have received the bird in 
the flesh from Handa, but assuredly it does not breed 
there. 
Mr. Osborne observes of this bird : " In Caithness it is a well- 
known and abundant species, breeding in considerable 
numbers on the wide moors and marshy tracts of the 
interior of the county. A low and remote piece of moor- 
land of this description in Watten parish, surrounded by 
thousands of acres of grouse moors and sheep grazings, and 
studded by numbers of small lakes or ' dhulochans,' con- 
taining mossy mounds and islands of varied size and shape, 
formed for many years a favourite breeding-station of the 
Arctic gull. It is to be feared this interesting colony is 
now thoroughly broken up, the property having a few years 
ago come into the possession of an English nobleman, whose 
gamekeepers promptly declared war against the gulls ; and 
the ultimate result may be surmised from the fact, that in 
the first year, among other birds, no fewer than eighty skuas 
were destroyed." ^ Still common in the autumn, hunting the 
successful among the flocks of gulls that come after the 
herrings on the east coast (0. MSS., 1868). 
357. Stercorarius parasiticus (L.). Buffon's Skua. 
[" Buffon's skua has been found breeding in Caithness, though 
not for some years past " (Gray, Birds of the West of Scotland, 
p. 499).] 
^ See Seebohm's British Birds, vol. iii. p. 353. 
