LARID.1-:. 



66i 



BONAPARTE'S GULL. 



LaRUS PHILADELPHIA (Ord). 



It is to Thompson again that we are indebted for the first notice 

 of the occurrence of this species in the British Islands ; he having 

 correctly identified an example obtained near Belfast on February 

 I St 1848, which was brought to him before it was skinned. In 

 Scotland an adult, exhibited at a meeting of the Zoological Society 

 of London in 1884, was shot on Loch Lomond about the end of 

 April 1850, by Sir George H. Leith-Buchanan. In England, an 

 immature bird was killed in Falmouth Harbour on January 4th, 

 and another at Penryn— close by — on January loth, 1865 ; one was 

 shot early in November 1870 at St. Leonards in Sussex; and lastly, 

 a young example was obtained near Penzance on October 20th 1890 

 (Zool. 1891, p. 35). 



Gatke informed me that he obtained an adult on Heligoland in 

 the severe winter of 1845, but otherwise there appears to be no 

 authentic record of the appearance of this bird in Europe, outside 

 of the British Islands. In summer Bonaparte's Gull is widely dis- 

 tributed over the lakes and wooded regions of the Fur countries of 

 North America, from a little within the Arctic circle down to 

 Manitoba ; but it does not visit the ice-fringed shores to the north- 

 ward and is of very rare occurrence in Bering Sea, though not 

 uncommon along the Yukon and on the marshes at the mouth of 

 that great river. On migration it frequents the Pacific coast as far 



