PROCELLARIA CONSPICILLATA, Goud.

Spectacled Petrel. WANs

Procellaria conspicillata, Gould in Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. xiii. p. 362. Mea}

 

 

I wave always been of opinion that the bird here figured is not strictly referable to the Procedlaria equinoc-
tialis of Linneus; at the same time it must be admitted that it is most nearly allied to that species; the
subject is fraught with the more difficulty from the circumstance of the white markings on the face not ei
being always of the same form in different individuals; and from the gular region being white in some

instances, while in others it is black. In size the two species are very similar, but all the specimens of the

 

 

present bird that I have seen have a much shorter and more robust bill than the true eguinoctials, which Hi
moreover never has the white mark around the eye, the throat only being white.
The Procellaria conspicillata flies both in the Atlantic and Pacific, but is most plentiful between the
twenty-fifth and fiftieth degrees of south latitude. I observed it to be very abundant about the islands of | )
. . . . | :
St. Paul’s and Amsterdam, and from thence to Van Diemen’s Land; I also noticed it in considerable i
numbers off the Falkland Islands in the Atlantic and in the neighbourhood of Tristan d’Acunha. | I
As might be supposed, it is a bird possessing great powers of flight, and, like the other members of the bth
genus, feeds upon mollusca, the remains of dead cetacea, &c. Ht
. . . . . . . i | |
The sexes are so similar in markings that they are scarcely distinguishable. vi
. . . 7 . ae . . | ;
The entire plumage sooty black, with the exception of the chin, sides of the face, and a broad band
which crosses the forepart of the crown, passes down before and beneath, and curves upward behind the eye, |
which is white ; nostrils and sides of the mandibles yellowish horn-colour; culmen, tips of both mandibles, |
and a groove running along the lower mandible black ; feet black ; irides dark brown. ‘
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The figures are about two-thirds of the natural size. 4
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