On Birds observed in Kamchatka. 
271 
XIV.— Notes on the Birds observed during Three Visits to 
Kamchatka in 1896 and 1897. By G. E. H. Barrett- 
Hamiltqn, F.Z.S. 
During the course of my two missions to the Fur-Seal 
Islands of the North Pacific, in the years 1896 and 1897, it 
was on three occasions my good fortune to visit the mainland 
of the great Kamchatkan Peninsula. These visits were, unfor¬ 
tunately, all too brief, and consisted merely of two calls at 
Petropavlovsk, in H.M.S. ‘Spartan 5 from the morning of the 
14th to the evening of the 17th July 1896, in H.M.S. ‘Linnet 5 
from the morning of the 27th to 9 a.m. on the 31st of August 
1897 (for coaling and provisioning purposes), and a short stay 
from about noon on the 21st to 6 a.m. on the 24th August 
1897, in H.M.S. ‘Linnet, 5 in the neighbourhood of the 
almost unknown island of Karaginsld, olf the north-eastern 
coast. Nevertheless I was able to observe about 56 species 
of interesting birds*, and to bring home a collection of 69 
skinsf (representing 44 species), some of which are of special 
interest, either from their novelty, as in the ease of the 
Nutcracker, to which I have given the name Nucifraga 
kamchatkensis, or because they add to our knowledge of 
the distribution or life-history of little-known species. In 
fact the small collection of skins made on the shore of 
Ukinsk Bay adds a new locality to the rather meagre list 
of places from which specimens of Kamchatkan birds are 
known to us; the locality is, moreover, noteworthy for its 
propinquity to the interesting Anadyr and Chukchi regions, 
the avifauna of which is of special interest. 
Although we are largely indebted to the labours of Russian 
naturalists, such as Steller, Vossnessenski, Taczanowsld, 
von Kittlitz, and Dybowski, for our knowledge of the Kam¬ 
chatkan avifauna, their papers are scattered through a 
number of not easily procurable foreign periodicals, and it is 
* Out of a total of 270 ornithological specimens procured during the 
course of my wanderings. 
t In all representatives of 56 genera and 64 species were seen or 
obtained either by members of my party or by purchase from natives. 
