LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN GULLS AND TERNS. 155 



Nesting. — The laughing gulls usually arrive at Muskeget during 

 the second week in May, the date of arrival varying from May 7 to 

 17, according to the weather conditions. A period of warm weather 

 with strong southerly winds in the first part of May is likely to 

 bring them early, flying high in the air with the terns. Mating and 

 nest building soon begin and the first eggs are laid during the first or 

 second week in June. They build their nests in a compact colony, 

 among the sand dunes, near the center of the island, where the beach 

 grass grows long and thick on the sandy slopes and in the hollows 

 between the dunes. Usually the nests are, at least partially, concealed 

 in the beach grass, which grows 2 feet high or more, but often they 

 are in plain sight. When the nest is placed in the thick grass, a well- 

 trodden path over-arched with grass leads up to it on one side and 

 away from it on the other, so that the bird may enter and leave the 

 nest without turning around at the risk of ruffling its immaculate 

 plumage. The nests are frequently placed among the beach peas, 

 which grow in great profusion in the hollows among the sand dunes, 

 or, again, they are found under bayberry bushes that are scattered 

 all over the island — sometimes in the center of a clump. The nest is 

 sometimes merely a hollow in the sand among the beach grass, lined 

 with dry grasses, bits of sticks and rubbish ; but usually it is a well- 

 made structure of various coarse, dry grasses, firmly interwoven and 

 built up a few inches above the sand among clumps of beach grass, 

 beach peas, or poison-ivy vines. The interior of the nest is carefully 

 rounded and neatly lined with fine dry beach grass. By the middle 

 of June most of the nests contain full sets of eggs, though egg laying 

 is continued more or less all through the month. Very few chicks 

 are hatched before July, but during the first week in that month the 

 majority of the young birds appear and may be found hiding in the 

 beach grass or running about so nimbly that it is difficult to catch 

 them. 



Similar colonies formerly existed along the Long Island coast, 

 where in Giraud's day the laughing gull was a common summer resi- 

 dent. It occurs there now chiefly as a migrant, and I doubt if there 

 are any breeding colonies left. According to Mr. William Butcher's 

 notes it bred at South Oyster Bay up to 1884, at Amityville until 

 1887, and at Cedar Island as late as 1888. 



Dr. Witmer Stone (1908) says of its status in 1908 in New 

 Jersey : 



Formerly an abundant summer resident on the salt meadows along the coast, 

 it is now restricted to two colonies — one at Brigantius and the other on Gull 

 Island, Hereford Inlet — both under the protection of the National Association 

 of Audubon Societies. The birds arrive April 4 to 20. and have mostly de- 

 parted by October 1. The first sets of eggs are laid in May. 



