LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAlsr GULLS AND TERNS. 125 



enough on the California coast in winter, together with several other 

 species, but it is not known to breed within that State except in the 

 elevated regions east of the Sierras in the northern part of the State. 

 Although we are accustomed to associate gulls with the seashore this 

 species seems to be confined, during the breeding season, to the in- 

 terior, where it is widely distributed and in many places abundant, 

 particularly in the vicinity of the larger lakes, from northern Utah 

 to the barren grounds on the Arctic coast. The exact limits of its 

 distribution are none too well Imown, for the casual observer might 

 easily mistake it for the herring gull, which it closely resembles. 

 The ranges of the two species come together at the eastern edge of 

 the Great Plains, and undoubtedly many mistaken identifications 

 have been made where specimens have not been collected. Such was 

 the case at Crane Lake, Saskatchewan, where the herring gull had 

 been reported as breeding abundantly, but where all of the large gulls 

 that we collected during two seasons' work proved to be California 

 gulls, which were very common. 



Nesting. — The finest breeding colony of this species that I have 

 ever seen was at Big Stick Lake in that same region, 30 miles north 

 of Maple Creek. On June 14, 1906, our guide drove us out through 

 shallow water to a small island, about 300 yards from the shore. It 

 was a low, flat island, surrounded by gravelly or muddy beaches, 

 largely bare on the higher portions, except for a scattered growth of 

 coarse, dead weeds, but supporting quite a thick growth of long 

 grass on the lower or flatter portion. It may have contained more 

 than 1 acre of land, but certainly not over 2 acres at the most. As 

 we landed a flock of American white pelicans flew off from the far- 

 ther encl and a great cloud of California and ring-billed gulls arose 

 from the center of the island, but we devoted our attention at first 

 to the American avocets, which had flown out to greet us with their 

 yelping notes of protest. Their nests were placed in the short grass 

 near the beach or on the windrows of driftweed which lined the 

 shores. There were not over a dozen pairs in the colony. A small 

 colony of common terns were nesting in the short grass, two nests 

 of spotted sandpipers were found, Wilson's phalaropes were flying 

 about, and specimens of northern phalaropes and semipalmated sand- 

 pipers were collected. In the long grass we found a pintail's nest 

 with nine eggs in the process of hatching and five ducks' nests, wdth 

 apparently fresh eggs, which Ave took to be baldpates, though we 

 could not identify them with certainty, as the birds were not in- 

 cubating. On the higher portion of the island, among the tall dead 

 weeds, we found three ducks' nests, referred to hereafter under the 

 American merganser, which we were unable to satisfactorily identify. 

 The California and ring-billed gull colony occupied the whole of 



