THE COMMON GULL. 585 



anecdote will suffice : — " A man who was shooting on the 

 banks of the river Yare, seeing something, which had 

 the appearance of an eel half-swallowed, hanging from the 

 mouth of a Gull which was flying overhead, fired at the 

 bird, and on taking it up, found, not an eel, but — five 

 tallow candles attached to a piece of thread, to the other 

 end of which was fastened a sixth, the latter having been 

 almost entirely swallowed. The candles were about twelve 

 inches in length, with cotton wicks, such as are used on 

 board the fishing boats, from the deck of which he had 

 probably taken them."* The Gull, then, is not choice in 

 its diet ; it is, in fact, omnivorous. It skims the deep for 

 dead animal matter, follows the ship for oflfal thrown over- 

 board, paces the shore in quest of moUusks and marine 

 insects, flies inland in stormy weather (a specimen was 

 once brought me which had been shot in Hertfordshire, 

 twenty miles from the nearest navigable river) in winter 

 and spring, and follows the plough along with Eooks and 

 Jackdaws, alights on fields which have been manured with 

 decomposed fish, resorts to marshes for frogs and worms, 

 and after an inundation, repairs to the lately submersed 

 ground, and picks up the small quadrupeds which have 

 been drowned It usually flies at no great elevation above 

 the water, but when repairing inland and returning it 

 frequently rises to a very great height. 



The Common or Green-billed Gull, as it is sometimes 

 called, builds its nest of sea- weed, mixed occasionally with 

 grass and other vegetable substance, and places it most 

 frequently in a clifi" or isolated rock ; but, in those parts of 

 the coast which off'er it no such secure retreat, in marshes 

 and low islands. It lays two or three eggs. AVhen the 

 young are fully grown and able to provide for themselves 

 they mostly keep apart from the old birds. Ofi' certain 

 headlands to w^hich they resort in great numbers, the old 

 birds may then be observed resting for hours together in 

 * Mr. W. R. Fisher, in the Zoologist, vol. i. p. 248. 



