62 BUULETIN US, UNITED STATES WATIONAIi MUSEUM. 



LARUS LEUCOPTEEUS Faber. 

 ICELAND GULL. 



HABITS. 

 Contributed by Charles Wendell Townsend. 



The Iceland gull is a smaller edition of the glaucous gull, -which 

 it resembles closely in appearance and habits. Like its larger rela- 

 tive it breeds in the Arctic regions in Victoria Land, Boothia Penin- 

 sula, Greenland, Iceland, and east to Nova Zembla. It winters 

 wherever there is open water in its range and south to Long Island 

 and the British Isles. In the interior it is rare. Rather more arctic 

 in its distribution than the glaucous gull, it seldom comes as far 

 south in winter. 



Nesting. — The Iceland gull nests in communities by itself and 

 with other species of gulls both on high rocky cliffs and on low, 

 sandy shores. Ross (1835) found it breeding on the faces of preci- 

 pices on the shores of Prince Regent's Inlet with the glaucous gull, 

 "Ixit at a much less height and in greater numbers." Hagerup 

 (1891) at Ivigtut in Greenland says: 



About a thousanfl pair nest on the "bird cliff," above the liittiwalies. The 

 lowest nests are built at a height of about 200 feet; the highest at about 500 

 feet above sea level. In 1888 a single pair hatched their young away fron^ 

 the rest on the face of the cliff, close by the edge of the ice, and at the height 

 of 40 feet. Two pair raised their young during the three summers I was in 

 Greenland on a cliff which was formerly the home of numerous kittiwakes. 

 One of these nests was at the height of 15 feet, the other 100 feet above sea 

 level. 



He writes that the birds arrive in March and often lay their eggs 

 while the fiord below is still covered with ice. The earliest young 

 leave their nests at the close of July. 



The nest is rather a bulky affair, made up of mosses and grasses. 

 One set of eggs is laid, either two or three in number. 



Eggs. — The eggs are of a clay color with numerous chocolate- 

 colored markings. They are exactly like those of hyperboreus^ but 

 smaller. The measurements of 54 eggs, in various collections, aver- 

 age 68 by 48 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes meas- 

 ure 75.5 by 49.5, 72.5 by 51, 63.5 and 49.6, and 65.7 by 44.7 milli- 

 meters. 



Plumages. — The downy young are dingy white, with brownish- 

 gray spots above, especially about the head. In July and August 

 they are feathered out in the juvenal plumage, which is white, more 

 or less barred and mottled above with black and brown. Below they 

 are gray with indistinct cloudings. D wight (1906) says of this 



