i64 GULL GROUP 



length between something over 2 and a little less than 2^ inches. 

 They are less glossy than those of the more typical gulls, and 

 remarkable for their extraordinary variability in colouring. Generally 

 speaking, it may be said that the colouring ranges from clay-brown 

 with dark brown spots and underlying spots of grey to bluish grey or 

 creamy buff with the markings either exceedingly faint or conspicuous 

 and prominent. Kittiwakes were formerly held in some estimation 

 as articles of food by the poorer classes, and the present writer can 

 recall in his undergraduate days gulls of this and other species being 

 sold in Cambridge market after a heavy storm as pigeons ! 



The absence of the hind -toe is the distinctive feature of the 

 kittiwake ; but it may be added that the back and wing-coverts arc 

 slate-grey ; the scapulars and secondaries tipped with white ; the 

 primaries black, with white tips to the fourth and fifth ; and the rest 

 of the plumage white. In winter the nape and neck are tinged with 

 '"■rey. Young birds resemble the adults in winter-dress, but have black 

 lesser wing-coverts and a black band across the end of the tail ; while 

 the beak is black and the legs and feet arc brown, in place of being, in 

 the adult, respectively greenish yellow and black. The chick is dark 

 grey above tinged with buff. 



Blaek Tern Leaving the gulls with the kittiwake, we come to 

 (Hydroehelidon ^^^^ ^""^^ representative of the terns, or subfamily 

 . Sterninaj, in the form of the black tern, the .sole 



indigenous British representative of a genus contain- 

 ing four species, of which two others are stragglers to Britain. From 

 gulls terns are collectively distinguished by the upper and lower halves 

 of the beak being approximate!}' equal in length, with straight slender 

 tips, instead of the former being longer than the latter, and generally 

 bending down in front of it at the tip. The nostrils are slit-like ; the 

 tail is more or less distinctly forked, and in many cases extends 

 bej'ond the closed wings, which are always long ; and, as a rule, the 

 legs and feet are short. Although some gulls make an approximation 

 in the foregoing respects to terns, the latter are more lightly built 

 birds than the former, with a different t\-pc of flight, from which, in 

 conjunction with their long wings and forked tails, they derive their 

 popular title of sea-swallows. They are, moreover, much less given 

 to swimming than gulls ; and when they alight, with the exception of 

 the " noddies," they generally do so on land. Unlike many gulls, they 

 subsist chiefly on living prey, and more especially fishes, ujjon which 

 they swoop from above ; but .some of the species feed mainl\- on 



