BLACK-HEADED GULL 329 



The breeding-place is usually in the neighbourhood of the sea, 

 sometimes in an inland district. Year after year the same spot is 

 resorted to, and it is known that some of the guUeries in this country 

 have existed for centuries. One of the largest and best known in 

 England is at Scoulton Mere, in Norfolk. Half a century ago 

 20,000 birds annually bred at this spot, but the colony has now 

 diminished to less than half that number. A favourite site for the 

 gullery is an island in a mere or swamp, and the nests are placed 

 both on the ground and on clumps of rushes or tussocks of grass. 

 Three or four eggs are laid, varying in ground-colour from olive- 

 brown to pale green, blue, or salmon, blotched with black and dark 

 brown. During the breeding season the birds seek their food over 

 the surrounding country in marshes, meadow-lands, and fields that 

 are being ploughed. Seebohm says: *So easily do they adapt 

 themselves to changed circumstances, that they have already 

 become used to the steam-plough. It is a very pretty sight to watch 

 a party of these little gulls, looking snow-white in the distance 

 against the rich brown of the newly turned-up soil, paddling amongst 

 the clumsy clods with dainty, red-webbed feet, and continually 

 lifting their white wings to balance themselves on the rough ground, 

 reminding one of a group of angels by Gustavo Dor^.* One suspects 

 that Dore, being, like other artists, incapable of imagining the un- 

 imaginable, made use of gulls and such like as models for his angels. 

 This gull, like most of the Laridse, is a vociferous bird, and his 

 notes — short and rapid, like excited exclamations, or drawn out, 

 guttural in tone, and inflected in various ways — often soimd like 

 laughter ; hence the name of laughing gull, sometimes given to this 

 species, and the specific name of ridibundus. To my ear it is like 

 the guttural and extravagant laughter of the negro, rather than 

 that of the white man. 



Besides the six species described, there are six others, belonging 

 to the sub-family LarinsB (true gulls), which figure in the books as 

 British species. One of these (the second on the list) is perhaps a 

 regular visitor. 



Ivory gull {Fagophila ehurnea). — A circumpolar species ; occa- 

 sionally straggles to the British coasts. 



Glaucous gull {Laru8 glaucus). — Circumpolar in its range ; a 

 winter visitor to the northern parts of the United Kingdom. 



Iceland gull (L. leucopterua). — A rare winter visitor (to the 

 north) from the arctic regions. 



