BIRD PELLETS—EVIDENCE AS TO FOOD OF BIRDS. 14T 
GLAUCOUS GULL. 
Mr. H. W. Feilden, the well-known ornithologist, records 
how he visited a breeding place of this species, the rock-ledges 
being “‘ covered with the ordure and castings of the birds, and 
the remains of Little Auks.’’!° 
Ivory GULL. 
It is recorded by Seebohm that Captain M’Clintock found the 
remains of lemmings round a nest of the Ivory Gull, “‘ and also 
fresh pellets consisting of their hair and bones.’’!° 
GREAT. SKUA. 
Ma‘or Feilden found castings of this bird, composed 
principally of the bones and feathers of Kittiwakes, near the 
nesting colony on the Faroe Islands.t°6 
GREAT CRESTED GREBE. 
RED-NECKED GREBE. 
SLAVONIAN GREBE. 
EARED GREBE. 
All the above Grebes are believed to throw up castings. 
Agglutinated oval masses of their own feathers swallowed during 
preening have been found in their stomachs by various observers, 
including J. E. Harting, and ‘‘these, in all probability, would have 
been cast up in due time had the birds not been shot.’’!°7 
Mr). Vincent, in-a recent number of British Birds,'°® 
records finding a hard ball of vegetable matter (? Potamogeton) 
in the gizzard of a Great Crested Grebe on dissection. This was. 
probably a pellet in course of formation. 
LITTLE GREBE. 
A bird of this species from Felsted, Essex, now in the Essex 
Museum, was found on dissection to contain in its crop recogni- 
sable fronds of Lemna trisulca, various elytra of the water beetle, 
Brychius elevatus, and several broken elytra of another aquatic 
beetle, Deronectes sp. (either depressus or 12-pustulatus), also a 
small angular fragment of flint ; no trace of a pellet in course of 
104 Zoologist, 1878, p. 383 
105 British Birds, 1885, iii., p. 338 
106 Cf, Seebohm s British Birds 1885, iii., p.348. Saunders’s British Birds, 1889, p. 672.. 
Miss Frances Pitt (in British Birds, Dec. 1922, p. 179) observed castings of this bird, with 
droppings and feathers, littering the ground at a standing place frequented by the Skuas.. 
107 Cf. Zoologist, 1889, p 21; ibid 1865, pp. 9449, 9565, and 9619. Saunders s British. 
Birds, 1889, p 702 
108 British Birds, XV. 1922, p. 290. 
