102 BULLETIN 113, UNITED STATES NATIONAL, MUSEUM. 



LARUS ARGENTATUS Pontoppidan. 

 HERRING GULL. 



HABITS. 



Contributed by Charles Wcn'dell Townsend. 



The most widely distributed sea gull of the Northern Hemisphere 

 and the one that is best known because it frequents the haunts of 

 man, visiting his most populous harbors,, is the herring gull. But 

 slightly inferior in size to the great black-backed and burgomaster 

 gulls, it is distinguished from the former by its pearly gray back 

 and from the latter by the black tips to its wings. Not only is it a 

 bird familiar to those dwelling along the seacoast and to the voyagers 

 on the ocean, but it is found about lakes and rivers. Owing to better 

 protection given to breeding colonies, which were formerly systemati- 

 cally robbed of their eggs, and to the fact that the birds are not 

 molested in the neighborhood of large cities, the herring gull has not 

 only held its own, but is undoubtedly on the increase. 



Circumpolar in distribution the herring gull breeds from EUes- 

 mere Land to Manitoba and Maine, and in Europe to northern 

 France and the White Sea. It winters wherever there is open water 

 throughout its range, and as far south as Cuba and the Mediter- 

 ranean Sea. In northern regions the return of open water in the 

 spring often determines the arrival of these gulls as well as of other 

 water birds. An interesting example of this is shown in the case of 

 Cobalt Lake, Ontario, where a constant stream of hot water flows 

 into the lake from the silver mines. As a consequence the ice leaves 

 sometimes as much as two weeks earlier than it does in any of the 

 surrounding lakes. Arthur A, Cole (1910) reports that in 1910 "the 

 lake opened on March 31, and within 24 hours two herring gulls were 

 seen floating in the lake." 



On the eastern coast of the United States the herring gull spends 

 not only the winter but also the summer to a considerable distance 

 to the south of its breeding range, the most southern point of which 

 is No-Man's-Land in Penobscot Bay, Maine.^ In southern Maine 

 and on the New Hampshire and Massachusetts coasts it is difficult to 

 state the dates of migration, for the birds is always to be found there. 



Courtship. — In the spring one may often see on a sand bar some of 

 the herring gulls walking proudly about raising and lowering their 

 heads and emitting from time to time loud sonorous notes, a bugle 

 call which I believe to be their love song, while others stand quietly 

 by. As this song is given the head, with wide-open bill, is raised 

 until it points vertically upwards and then lowered to the horizontal 



1 A few herring gulls have recently bred near Marthas Vineyard. 



