590 GAVIA ATRICILLA. 



numbers that left the nests were comparatively few, and 

 those, as I thought, mostly males. Instead of travelling 

 high, as they are wont to do in fiiir and calm weather, they 

 skimmed closely over the land, contending with the wind 

 with surprising pertinacity, and successfully too. At such 

 times they were also quite silent. 



" This species breeds, according to the latitude, from the 

 1st of March to the middle of June ; and I have thought 

 that, on the Tortuga Keys, it produced two broods each 

 season. In New Jersey, and farther to the eastward, the 

 nest resembles that of the Ring-billed Gull, Larus zonorhyn- 

 chus, being formed of dried sea-weeds and land-plants, two 

 and sometimes three inches high, with a regular rounded 

 cavity, from four and a half to five inches in diameter, and 

 an inch and a half in depth. This cavity is formed of finer 

 grasses, placed in a pretty regular circular form. I once 

 found a nest formed as it were of two ; that is to say, two 

 pairs had formed a nest of nearly double the ordinary size, 

 and the two birds sat close to each other during rainy 

 weather, but separately, each on its own three eggs. I ob- 

 served that the males, as well as the females thus concerned 

 in this new sort of partnership, evinced as much mutual 

 fondness as if they were brothers. On the Tortugas, where 

 these Gulls also breed in abundance, I found their eggs 

 deposited in slight hollows scooped in the sand. Whilst at 

 Galveston, in Texas, I found their nests somewhat less 

 bulky than in the Jerseys, which proved to me how much 

 birds are guided in these matters by differences in atmospheric 

 temperature and locality. 



" I never found more than three eggs in a nest. Their 

 average length is two inches and half-an-eighth, their 

 jrreatest breadth a trifle more than an inch and a half. 

 They vary somewhat in their general tint, but are usually of 

 a light earthy olive, blotched and spotted with dull reddish- 

 brown and some black, the markings rather more abundant 

 towards the larger end. As an article of food they are ex- 

 cellent. These Gulls are extremely anxious about their 

 eggs as well as their young, which are apt to wander away 

 from the nest while yet quite small. They are able to fly at 



