200 The Field Naturalist^ s Quarterly Aug. 



A remarkable instance of this peculiarity is to be found in 

 the popularity which Twigmore Warren, in the north of 

 Lincolnshire, has enjoyed from time immemorial as a 

 breeding-place of the Black-headed Gull {Larus ridibtindns). 

 The "gull-ponds" of Twigmore are situated on the estate 

 of Mr R. N. Sutton-Nelthorpe, of Scawby Hall, Lincoln- 

 shire. Scawby lies — roughly speaking — about midway on 

 the Great Central Railway line from Retford to Grimsby, 

 and about twenty miles south of the Humber, being thus 

 within easy reach — from a gull's point of view — of the sea, 

 although quite inland. Hither the gulls begin to come 

 towards the end of March, and within a month vast numbers 

 have assembled. The iirst eggs make their appearance at 

 the latter end of April, but the best time to visit the ponds 

 is later, in May, when the birds are nearly all sitting, and 

 the margins of the pools are literally covered with eggs. 

 As the month of June wears on, the colony is gradually 

 thinned out by daily departures, until by the end of July not 

 a gull is to be seen. 



Apart from what may be called their great technical 

 interest to the ornithologist, the Twigmore Gull-Ponds have 

 many attractions to all lovers of nature. There are two 

 sheets of water, the larger of which is rather a small lake 

 than a mere pond, charmingly situated in a hollow, well 

 wooded with pines and other trees, and bright — at the 

 proper season — with the gay blossoms of many rhodo- 

 dendron bushes. And an extraordinary spectacle, easier 

 imagined than described, the ponds present during the breed- 

 ing season. Dotted thick upon the surface of the water, 

 whitening the reeds of the margins and the banks in their 

 thousands, and darkening the sky in dense flight, are 

 countless myriads of snowy gulls, wearing the matrimonial 

 livery of the dark plumage on the head which the species 

 assumes during the spring, and from which it takes its 

 popular name. The air is filled with ceaseless raucous 

 cries, which sound on the outskirts of the encircling thicket 

 like nothing so much as the roar of a racecourse when the 

 numbers go up. And in the fields, for some distance around, 

 numerous groups of birds may be seen hopping solemnly 

 in the wake of the plough, eagerl}' pecking at the uncon- 



