the indigestible parts as Hawks do.  Mr. Couch, in the ‘Zoologist’ for 1874, mentions having taken a Misseltoe Thrush from the throat of one; and I can quite believe it, supposing it found the Thrush dead or floating half drowned on the water.  I have seen my tame ones catch and kill a nearly full-grown rat, and bolt it whole; and young ducks, I am sorry to say, disappear down their throats in no time, down and all.  They are also great robbers of eggs, no sort of egg coming amiss to them; Guillemots’ eggs, especially, they are very fond of; this may probably account for there being no Guillemots breeding in Guernsey or Sark, and only a very few at Alderney; in fact, Ortack being the only place in the Channel Islands in which they do breed in anything like numbers.

Professor Ansted includes the Herring Gull in his list, but only marks it as occurring in Guernsey and Sark.  There are two, an old and a young bird, in the Museum.

168.  LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL. Larus fuscus, Linnaeus.  French, “Goeland a pieds jaunes.”—­The Lesser Black-backed Gull is common in the Islands, remaining throughout the year and breeding in certain places.  None of these birds breed in Guernsey itself, or on the mainland of Sark, and very few, if any, on Alderney.  A few may be seen, from time to time, wandering about all the Islands during the breeding-season; but these are either immature birds or wanderers from their own breeding-stations.  About Sark a few pairs breed on Le Tas[33] and one or two other outlying islets; their principal breeding-stations, however, appear to be on the small rocky islands to the north of Herm, on all of which, as far out as the Amfrocques, we found considerable numbers breeding, or rather attempting to do so; for this summer, 1878, having been generally fine, all these rocks were tolerably easily landed on, and the fishermen had robbed the Lesser Black-backs to an extent which threatens some day to exterminate them, in spite of the Guernsey Bird Act, which professes to protect the eggs as well as the birds; but a far better protection for these poor Black-backs is a roughish summer, when landing on these islands is by no means safe or pleasant, and frequently impossible.  On Burhou, near Alderney, there are also a considerable number of Lesser Black-backs breeding, though they fare quite as badly from the Alderney and French fishermen as those on the Amfrocques and other islands north of them do from the Guernsey fishermen.  On all these islands the nests of the Lesser Black-backs were placed amongst the bracken, sea stock, thrift, &c, which grew amongst the rocks, and on the shallow soil which had collected in places.  When I was at Burhou in 1876 I found Lesser Black-backs breeding all over the Island, some of the nests being placed on the low rocks, some amongst the bracken and thrift; so thickly scattered amongst the bracken were the nests, that one had to be very careful in walking for fear of treading on the nests and breaking the