453 
the Birds of the Lower Petchora. 
doubt, the legs lose their yellow colour and become greyish 
white, but the orange-red eyelid is retained. Mr. Hume's 
Larus argentatus agrees exactly with the Mediterranean Her¬ 
ring-Gull ( L . leucophceus ). 
+-Larus glaucus, L. 
Our first acquaintance with the Glaucous Gull in the north 
of Russia was made on the night of the 13-14th July, when 
we landed upon No. 4 of the Golaievskai group of islands. 
Here we shot several old birds, and secured specimens of the 
young in down, which latter, upon comparison, resemble the 
young of the last-named species, but, as might have been ex¬ 
pected, have fewer and fainter dark markings on the back*. 
The nests were heaps of sand hollowed slightly at the apex; 
and a few irregularly disposed tufts of coarse seaweed formed 
the only lining. Seaweed and small drift wood were the only 
materials on the low almost perfectly level sandbank which 
the birds could choose from. Afterwards we saw Glaucous 
Gulls commonly along the shore at Dvoinik, and shot speci¬ 
mens from the deck of the wrecked sloop. The following is 
a description of the soft parts of the adult birds obtained by 
us :—Legs pale flesh-colour with a tinge of pink ; beak and 
round the eye straw-yellow; point of bill pale horn, and a 
vermilion spot on the angle of the lower mandible; pupils 
blue-black, irides pale straw-yellow; inside of mouth pale 
flesh-colour. 
-|-Stercorarius crepidatus (Gm.), Saund. P. Z. S. 1876, 
p. 326. 
We found the Richardson's Skua upon the tundra mingling 
with flocks of the next species, or scattered in pairs over their 
breeding-haunts. Nowhere did we find them so abundant as 
the Buffon's Skua; but though we obtained no eggs of the 
latter species, we found several nests of the former. The first 
* We find the young in down of this species described as pure white 
on first emergence from the shell (Harting , 1 Fauna of the Prybilov Islands f 
reprinted from the 1 Field’: London, 1875, p. 32), becoming gradually 
brownish black and grey as they become older. Those we obtained 
were about four or five days old. 
2 i 2 
