376 
BLACK SKIMMER, OR SHEERWATER. 
slightly forked ; shoulders of the wing, brownish asli ; legs 
and webbed feet, tawny. It had a sharp shrill cry when 
wounded and taken. 
This is probably the Brown Tern mentioned by Willoughby, 
of which so many imperfect accounts have already been given. 
The figure in the plate, like those which accompany it, is 
reduced to one half the size of life. 
BLACK SKIMMER, OR SHEERWATER. — RHYNCHOPS 
NIGRA. — Plate LX. Fig. 4. 
Arct. Zool. No. 445. — Catesby, i. 90. — Le bec-en-ciseaux, Buff. viii. 454, 
Tab. 36. — Beale's Museum, No. 3530. 
RHYNCHOPS NIGRA. — Linnaeus.* 
Rhynchops nigra, Steph. Cont. Sh. Zool. vol. xiii. p. 136 — Cuv. Reg. Anim. i. 
522. — Bonap. Synop. — Less. Man. d,' Orn. ii. p. 385. 
This truly singular fowl is the only species of its tribe 
hitherto discovered. Like many others, it is a bird of passage 
in the United States ; and makes its first appearance on the 
* This very curious genus is composed, according to ornithologists, of two 
species, — that of our author and the R. ffavirostris, 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 shew 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 subsistence. 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 shews 
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 de mer, des bandes tellement epaisses, qu’il resem- 
blait a des longues echarpes noires et mobiles qui obscurcissaient le ciel depuis 
les rives de Penco jusqu’a l’lle de Quiriquine, dans un espace de douze milles. 
Quoique le bec-en-ciseaux semble defavorise par la forme de son bee, nous 
