172 The Irish Naturalist. [July, 



which a few bushes and patches of long grass are growing. 

 The gulls make large nests of the dried grass thrown up by 

 the winter's floods, under the bushes and between the stones. 

 Most of the nests (about twenty) had been robbed a short 

 time previous to our visit, and we found only three or four in 

 which the birds had begun to lay, with one or two eggs in 

 each. We also found on the terns' island two gulls' nests, 

 in one of which there were three eggs, and our boatman 

 informed us that throughout the lake many solitary pairs had 

 nests on many of the small islands. In June, 1895, my friend, 

 Mr. R. J. Ussher, visiting lyOUgh Corrib, found this gull 

 breeding in small numbers on the islands about the lake 

 between Cong and Oughterard, and also found a few pairs 

 breeding on Lough Erne, Co. Fermanagh. I have not myself 

 found this bird breeding on the sea-cliffs of Mayo, although 

 when visiting the north coast in May, 1893, I saw a solitary 

 bird flying along the cliffs between Porturlin and Portacloy, 

 but saw no trace of a nesting-place. 



The Common Gui.i. {Larus capitis) is not so numerous as the 

 smaller gulls, though it is extending its breeding-range to 

 places where a few years ago none were to be seen. I first 

 met this gull breeding on a small island in Lough Talt, about 

 twelve miles from the sea, in the heart of the Ox Mountains, 

 Co. Sligo, in 1855 ; only two or three pairs bred on the lough. 

 I saw the nests (one with an addled G.gg} on a little rocky 

 islet, and some young birds just able to fly, following their 

 parents about the lake. Since that date the gulls have 

 deserted Lough Talt as a breeding-haunt in consequence of 

 boats having been placed on the lake for the convenience of 

 trout fishers, who frequent the water during the breeding-time 

 in May. They disturbed the gulls so much as to cause them to 

 leave altogether. 



This was all I knew of the gulls breeding in this locality, 

 until some years later, when I was told of their breeding on 

 Lough-na-Crumpawn (the lake of the stumps) about ten 

 miles from Ballina, between Glenmore and Crossmolina, but 

 thinking the gulls mentioned must be the Blackheaded, I did 

 not visit the lough until the 17th of May, 1882, when in the 

 company of my friends, Dr. S. Darling and his brother James, 

 we drove to Glenmore, and taking a boy as our guide walked 

 to the bog, which was a wide expanse of low peat moor, with 



