40 
BULLETIN 292. U. 
DEPAEniEXI OF AGRICULTURE. 
to visit the lightship and spend the winter in the immediate vicinity 
for 24 consecutive years, outliving all the lightship attendants who 
first fed it. During the last years it arrived October 5, 1890: Octo- 
ber 12. 1891; September 28. 1892: October 7. 1893: October 2. 1894; 
and October 2. 1895. It was last seen in spring April 6, 1892 ; April 7. 
1893: April 5. 1894: April 6. 1895, and April 7. 1896— a remarkably 
uniform date of departure. 
VEGA GULL. Larus vcgse Palmen. 
Knowledge concerning the distribution and migration of the Vega 
gull is very limited. It was originally described from specimens 
taken at Pidlin. on the northern coast of Siberia, where the ship 
Vega had wintered, and it has since become known along that coast 
from the Taimvr Peninsula 
east to Bering Strait, on 
the Iiakoff Islands, and at 
Plover Bay. where it is 
common, and also along the 
coasts of Kamchatka and 
the Sea of Okhotsk. A 
specimen now in the United 
States National Museum 
was taken by Nelson on 
Diomede Island in Bering 
Strait, in July. 1881. In 
migration and winter this 
gull has been taken on the 
coasts of Japan and China, 
south to Formosa and the 
Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands. 
Information concerning 
the occurrence of the Vega 
gull on the eastern side of Bering Strait is less satisfactory. Under 
the name of Larus borealis, Baird notes a specimen from Norton 
Sound, and the catalogue of the United States National Museum re- 
cords that it was taken by BisehofT at St. Michael in May: Nelson 
records a specimen of Larus cacliinnans that was brought to him at St. 
Michael. October 16. 1SS0. and thinks that he saw the same species on 
several other occasions, and that it occurs on the Alaska coast from 
Kotzebue Sound to the mouth of the Yukon. Both these names, 
borealis and eacliinnans. refer to Larus vegse. whose occurrence on the 
Alaskan coast was made certain in 1910 by the capture of four speci- 
mens at Nome, September 2-14. (Thayer) . One of these was identified 
at the Biological Survey. Whether or not the species breeds to the 
eastward of Bering: Strait remains for future determination. 
ig. 20. — Vega gull (Larus vegz). 
