THE BONAPARTE GULL. 553 



webs of inner primaries, where adult is pearl-gray ; the inner primaries narrowly 

 tipped with white as before; tail crossed terminally, or nearly so, with a broad 

 band of blackish or brownish dusky; bill still lighter, but blackish toward tip. 

 Length 12.00-14.00 (304.8-355.6); av. of six Columbus specimens: wing 10.30 

 (261.6) ; tail 3.60 (91.4) ; bill I.I2 (28.5) ; tarsus 1.41 (35.8). 



Recognition Marks. — Little Hawk size ; size of Common Tern ( Sterna 

 hirundo) ; head black, in breeding plumage; bill black or mostly black; mantle 

 gull-blue; primaries mostly white and gull-blue, tipped with black, and very nar- 

 rowly with white. Distinguished from the Franklin Gull ( L. franklinii) by its 

 small size, its black bill, and different pattern of primaries. To be told at a glance 

 from the Terns by its shorter, squarish tail, and in breeding plumage, by head 

 being blackish all around. 



Nesting. — Does not breed in Ohio. Nest, of sticks lined with grass, etc., 

 placed four to twenty feet high in bushes, trees, or on stumps. Bggs, 3, rarely 4, 

 greenish olive or brown, with smallish spots or blotches of umber and lilac, chiefly 

 about larger end. Av. size, 1.95 x 1.35 (49.5 x 34.3). 



General Range. — Whole of North America, breeding mostly north of the 

 United States. Not yet recorded from south of the United States, though re- 

 ported from the Bermudas. 



Range in Ohio. — "Common spring and fall migrant on Lake Erie; less 

 common and rather irregular in the interior of the state" (Wheaton). 



THIS pretty little gull claims the whole of North America for its home, 

 altho it nests only from the northern United States northward, apparently 

 not quite to the Arctic Circle, or at least not to the Arctic Ocean. This species 

 is often common near streams and other bodies of water large enough to 

 furnish their food of fish. The three acres of the Oberlin water-works reser- 

 voir, well within the corporation, is visited each spring by flocks which refresh 

 themselves upon the half-domesticated fish found there. I have often seen 

 flocks of twenty or more birds passing over plowed fields during the vernal 

 migration, sometimes even stooping to snatch some toothsome grub from 

 the freshly turned furrow, but oftener sweeping past in that lithe, graceful 

 flight so characteristic of this small gull. To the farm boy, shut in a wax 

 from any body of water larger that an ice-pond, where no ocean birds could 

 ever be expected to wander, the appearance of this bird, bearing the wide 

 freedom of the ocean in his every movement, is truly a revelation. It sends 

 the blood coursing hotly through his veins until the impulse to get away 

 into the broader activities of life, to see something of the wide land known 

 to this winged creature, cannot be put down. Such is the bird's mission to 

 one and another. 



The flight of Bonaparte's Gull is grace itself. He progresses easily by 

 continued leisurely wing strokes, each stroke seeming to throw the light body- 

 upward slightly as though it were but a feather's weight. In flight the 

 watchful eve is turned hither and thither in quest of some food morsel, which 

 may be a luckless fish venturing too near the surface of the water, to be 



