196 BULLETIN" 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



This was in late July and early August. 



* * * Ou July 21, 1909, the writer, in company with Kermit Roosevelt, 

 set out * * * to search for nests of this gull. Soon a nest was seen 

 floating in the lake, having doubtlessly become detached from the vegetation 

 in which it had been placed. On our approach a parent left this nest and began 

 circling overhead, where it was quickly joined by its mate, and both birds 

 were shot. A downy nestling and one egg was taken from this nest * * *. 

 The egg measured 55 by 38 millimeters. Color, olive, streaked and blotched 

 with dark brown, the streaks most numerous at the great end, the blotches most 

 numerous at the small end * * *_ -jjig nestling, sex undetermined, is cov- 

 ered with down throughout, but the quills are sprouting, the primaries having 

 attained a length of 20 millimeters, although still inclosed in the sheath. The 

 neck, upper parts, sides of body, and crissum are drab gray, the feathers of 

 the back and wings are obscurely banded with hair brown ; crown and cheeks 

 heavily spotted with fuscous ; middle uuderparts soiled white. Irides grayish 

 brown; bill flesh color, subterminally gray; legs and feet brownish flesh color; 

 claws plumbeous, tipped with horn color (from fresh specimen). 



An older nestling (male) * * *, taken on the same day at Lake Naivasha, 

 * * * has shed the neossoptiles from the middle portion of the crown and 

 the sides of the face, where the permanent feathers or teleoptiles are of a gray 

 (dark gull gray) color. On the under parts, also, many of the neossoptiles 

 have disappeared, especially at the sides of the abdomen, disclosing the pure 

 white final feathers. In a broad area down the middle of the abdomen, where 

 more of the downy feathertips are retained the color is pale yellowish drab 

 gray. The forehead, a broad stripe from the base of the bill, above the eye, 

 extending to the back of the head, the neck, throat, and breast are pale yellow- 

 islvdrab gray; back dark gull gray; scapulars and wings dark gull gray tipped 

 with pale yellowish ; rump and crissum drab gray * * ♦. 



This bird is the reference specimen used b}^ Dwight ^^ as a basis 

 for his description of the natal down. 

 The nest itself is described by Mearns from another nest — 



* * * concealed in a small tuft of papyrus growing at the edge of the 

 open water. Its situation was much like the nesting places of the red-knobbed 

 coot {FuUca cristata Gmel.). This nest, as preserved, measures 210 milli- 

 meters in diameter by 100 millimeters in depth. It is made up of lumps 

 of peaty mud, much mixed with aquatic roots, the largest lump measuring 

 roughly 150 by 85 by 75 millimeters. Between these lumps are packed numer- 

 ous petioles and root.-tocks of aquatic plants, chiefly of the blue water lily. 

 The flat top of this nest is thinly covered with roots, stems of grasses, rushes, 

 and water lilies. 



It seems as though the year old (immature) birds do not concen- 

 trate in any numbers in the breeding colonies. This is suggested by 

 a marginal note in the Mearns manuscript : 



* * * remark on its abundance, and the scarcity of immature dark 

 colored birds during the breeding season at Lake Naivasha. 



Also, in another place in which he repeats his description of the 

 birds circling overhead at his approach to their nests, he writes: 



'» BuU. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 52, 1925, p. 272. 



