scaurien.
/ˈskɔːri/ Orkney and Shetland.
The young of any kind of gull.
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the world > animals > birds > order Charadriiformes > family Laridae (gulls and terns) > [noun] > member of genus Larus (gull) > young
coddy-moddy gull1673
scauriea1795
Iceland gull1822
powder puff1850
a1795 G. Low Fauna Orcadensis (1813) 122 The Brown and White Gull..Orc. Scory..is the scarcest of the Gull-kind in Orkney.
1805 G. Barry Hist. Orkney iii. i. 303 The Brown and White Gull..which the people here call the scorey, is much more rarely met with than most others.
1806 P. Neill Tour Orkney & Shetl. 25 The Brough..is the resort and nursery of hundreds of scauries, or herring-gulls (larus fuscus). I believe the Orkney name scaurie is applied to this gull only while it is young and speckled; and it loses its speckled appearance after the first year.
1821 W. Scott Pirate I. v. 111 For your harvest on the crag, I suppose you mean these scowries, or whatever you call them.
1822 Mem. Wernerian Nat. Hist. Soc. 4 181 They [sc. the Shetland fishermen] have distinguished this bird by the name of Iceland Scorie, (or the Young Iceland Gull); Scorie being the general Shetlandic appellation for the young of several species of the gull family.
1844 W. H. Maxwell Wanderings in Highlands & Islands II. xxi. 294 A skoray, or young kittiwake.
1899 J. Spence Shetland Folk-lore 14 The plee o' the skorie, the birr o' the snipe.
1918 T. Manson Humours of Peat Commission I. 125 I mind haein a tame scorie..whin I wis a boy.
1960 People's Jrnl. (Dundee) 12 Mar. 9/2 Ah'm fair deav't wi' the awfa scraichin' o' the scurries.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1910; most recently modified version published online December 2020).
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n.a1795