Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/240

214 40° N. and 40° S. lat., with the exception of the two or three stragglers which have wandered out of their usual limits as far as our coasts (vide Harting's Brit. Birds, p. 169). I can detect no difference amongst the large series I have examined from various localities in the warmer portions of the globe, such as the American coasts and islands, the island of Ascension, the coast of Africa, including the Red Sea, the Polynesian Islands, Australia, and the South of Japan, and the accounts of its habits and nidification seem to agree. Its most noted breeding-place is at Ascension, where the great nesting colony known as "Wide-awake Fair" is one of the few attractions of that huge cinder-heap, and excellent accounts of it have been given by various visitors, the most recent being that by Dr. C. Collingwood (Zool. 2nd ser. p. 979–984), and the late Commander Sperling (Ibis, 1868, pp. 286–288). In all cases the bird seems to sit upon a single egg laid upon the bare ground or amongst the cavities of the lava or coral, according to the locality, making no nest whatever, wherein it differs from the Noddies (Anous), and as soon as the duties of incubation are ended and the young can fly, away they all go to sea. Being single-brooded birds, it was natural to suppose that they bred but once in a year, and at tolerably corresponding periods in either hemisphere; still one was continually meeting with immature specimens, whose plumage at the date of their acquisition was not at all what it ought to have been if they had been hatched at the normal periods or at those at which the birds had been found breeding by various explorers. The explanation of this apparent discrepancy was given me by Drs. Drew and Purchas, R.N., who had recently returned from Ascension, and on enquiring of Lieut. Mountjoy Squire, R.N., at present stationed there, the statements of my friends were confirmed, viz., "that the 'Wide-awakes' come up from the sea to breed about every eight months, or three times in two years."

Probably this is the case in other breeding-places, but I only know it as a fact of this one, and a very remarkable and interesting fact it is. As regards the plumage of this well-known species, it is hardly necessary to say more than that it is sooty black on the mantle, wings and tail, except outer webs of streamers; white on under parts and neck; black on crown and occiput, with a black streak from base of bill to eye, and a broad white frontal band from extending to a little above the eye, but not beyond it; the