THE SKUA. 
391 
Belfast Bay, in the vicinity of which place they were observed 
until the 3rd of October. 
Mr. Robert Davis, jun., of Clonmel, in passing by sea from 
Dungarvan to Stradbally, on the 15th of August, 1838, observed 
a great dark- coloured skua, which he believed to be of this 
species, “ give chase to . a large gull and compel him to deliver 
what had been a copious meal of sprats. The birds flew within 
a few yards of the boat, and just as they passed the surrender 
took place. The skua immediately turned round, settled himself 
on the water, and picked up the sprats at his leisure, leaving the 
vanquished to fish for himself again.” In the winter of 1845-6, 
one of these skuas (the species of which has been ascertained by a 
description sent to me) was shot near the island of Whiddy, Bantry 
Bay • — Lord Bantry has it preserved.* 
Mr. G. Matthews, when on his sporting tour in Norway during 
the summer and autumn of 1843, met with the skua on an island 
at the entrance of Trondjiem (Drontheim) Fiord, on the 7th of J uly. 
It attacked both his companions and himself by striking them on 
the head, but they made the bird pay with its life for such temerity : 
it was supposed that they had approached its nest too nearly. 
They did not see the L. catarrhacies north of Trondjiem. In the 
summer and autumn of 1849, this was found by Capt. May to be 
the scarcest of the four species of skua along the coast of Norway, 
but he shot a few of them. They were easy of access ; — when 
the party landed on the islands they occasionally flew very near 
them. 
Dr. Fleming, in the e Edinburgh Philosophical J ournal,' vol. i. 
p. 99 (1819), gives a very interesting account of this bird at its 
breeding-haunts in the “ Zetland Islands,”- — the only place within 
the British seas where it nidifies — as Mr. Drosier likewise does in 
‘Loudon's Magazine of Natural History' for 1828 (vol. iii. 
p. 321) : the chase of the eagle by skuas, as witnessed by the 
latter gentleman, is most graphically narrated. 
The Lestris catarrhactes is the only one of the European 
species of its genus not included among the birds of the United 
* Mr. G. Jackson. 
