THE HERRING GULL. 



549 



more extensive on the inner web until the seventh quill is reached, in which the 

 black is nearly obsolete; the second to sixth quills tipped with white 1 ; remaining 

 plumage entirely white ; bill bright chrome with a vermilion spot near angle, and 

 sometimes black traces; feet and legs pale flesh-color. Adull in winter: Similar 

 but head and neck streaked with brownish gray ; bill duller. Immature : Brown- 

 ish gray, nearly uniform, or finely mottled with grayish white below ; streaked 

 with the same on head and neck : upper parts irregularly varied, — brownish gray 

 of two shades with dull white and grayish buff ; wing-quills and tail brownish 

 dusky, the former unmarked, the latter mottled laterally with dull huffy or whitish ; 

 bill blackish, paling basally. Between this and the adult in high plumage every 

 intergradation appears. Length 22.00-26.00 (558.8-660.4) ; av. of nine O. S. U. 

 specimens: wing 17.60 (447.); tail 6.72 (170.7); bill 2.14 (=54.4); tarsus 2.68 

 (68.1). 



Recognition Marks. — Brant size ; mantle rather light bluish gray ; black 

 wing-tips ( with white spots on adult) distinctive for bird of this size. 



Nest, on the ground, or 1 under the influence of persecution ) in trees, of 

 grasses, moss, and seaweed. Eggs, 2 or 3, yellowish and olive-brown to dull 

 bluish white, spotted, blotched, and sometimes scrawled, with chocolate-brown 

 and umber. Av. size, 2.85 x 2.00 (72.4 x 50.8). 



General Range. — The northern portion of the northern hemisphere ; in North 

 America breeding from Maine, northern New York, the Great Lakes, and Min- 

 nesota, northward; south in winter to Cuba and Lower California. 



Range in Ohio. — Common in spring and fall on Lake Erie, where' some 

 regularly winter and a few possibly breed; not uncommon migrant along water- 

 courses and about the reservoirs in the interior. 



OHIO does not furnish these graceful intermediaries of water and sky 

 a permanent home, lint they are easily the commonest birds of their group 

 in spring and autumn. Their breeding ground lies further north, in the 

 Georgian Bay and beyond, and only a few score of the immature birds in 

 the gray plumage, "ower young to marry yet," lounge about upon our Lake 

 Erie Islands during the summer. Similarly the majority of individuals pass 

 further south during the actual freeze-up of mid-winter, proceeding appar- 

 ently to the seacoast of the Carolinas, but a few hardy individuals, old birds 

 this time, linger about the rifts in the Lake Erie ice, or follow the ice-cutters 

 at their task, while a few more winter on the Ohio River. The southern 

 birds, however, are among the first to put a favorable construction on the 

 early promises of spring. I saw one passing up the Scioto River on the 

 13th day of February last year — and by the middle of March they are again 

 common on the Lake. 



The Herring Gull is both a fisherman and a scavenger. In the former 

 capacity he takes up his station on a post in one of those picturesque lines 

 of piling which support the fish traps, stretching in endless profusion along 

 the south shore of Lake Erie. Here the Gull helps himself freely to the 

 small fry. which are driven to the top by the struggles of their big brothers 

 in the toils. When the season is dull or the nets are empty, the bird wings 



1 The American birds were for many years described as a subspecies, L. 



the ground of mure extensive sulitermm.il Mi. V >l immune- .in.) I.ne.i -..■. 

 were found to be inconstant, and the name abandoned (Cf. Auk, July. io..j i 



