LARID.'E. 



665 



THE BLACK-HEADED GULL. 



Larus ridibundus, Linnaeus. 



This species — which might be more appropriately called the 

 Brown-headed Gull, for the hood is certainly not black — is 

 generally distributed throughout the year on the flat portions 

 of our shores, resorting in spring to marshy situations near the sea- 

 coast and even more to inland meres. Drainage, cultivation, com- 

 merce (as in the case of Fleetwood) and other causes, have led to 

 the destruction of many ' gulleries,' though the birds have simply 

 betaken themselves to other situations, and are probably as 

 numerous as ever. Of late years they have visited the London 

 waters in numbers, for the food supplied in winter. In the south of 

 England the most western colony is, up to the present, near Poole in 

 Dorset ; while there is one in Romney Marsh in Kent ; two, as Mr. 

 Miller Christy tells me, are to be found near the coast in Essex ; 

 and there are two or three in Norfolk, including the well-known' 

 Scoulton Mere. One important settlement is near Brigg in Lincoln- 

 shire, and there are smaller ones in Yorkshire ; those of Norbury 

 and Aqualate Mere in Staffordshire have been celebrated for 

 centuries ; in Wales there are several ; and large colonies exist 

 on Walney Island in Lancashire, in ' Lakeland ' and Northumber- 

 land. In Scotland they are even more plentiful, some of the largest 

 being near Wigton and Glasgow, at Inchmoin on Loch Lomond, and 

 in Perthshire, as well as in Moray, while smaller ones are found from 



