32 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB 



15 [40] Rissa tridactyla tridactyla (Linn.). 

 KiTTiwAKE; "Pinny Owl"; "Winter Gull." 



Common winter visitor. September 6 to April 2. 



On November i, 1914, I watched what was, for this region, an unusually 

 large number of these birds fishing off Ipswich bar. At times there were as many 

 as five hundred. They hovered over the breakers in a compact flock all headed 

 to windward, constantly flickering their white wings and constantly dropping to 

 the water, where the immersion of the head and neck appeared to be all that was 

 necessary to secure their prey. In this way they gradually worked to the wind- 

 ward edge of the shoal, which evidently harbored a school of fish, when they 

 would circle around to the leeward end and repeat the process. Later, as the 

 bar became exposed with the ebbing tide, they alighted on the sand, but bands of 

 a hundred or more would fly about like sandpipers, turning now this way, now 

 that in the precise manner of military evolutions. A year later I saw a flock of 

 fifty Kittiwakes fishing at the same place. They pursued similar tactics but as 

 their prey was evidently deeper in the water they plunged completely below the 

 surface at each attempt, not to emerge until after the water had closed over them. 



16 [42] Larus hyperboreus Giinn. 

 Glaucous Gull; Burgomaster. 



Not uncommon winter visitor. August 15 to May 26. 



Since 1905, when I stated that I had never seen this bird, I have become 

 familiar with it, not only in Labrador but on our Massachusetts coast. In the 

 original Memoir I was able to give only four records for Essex County for fifty 

 years; since then I have several records for nearly every year. Many of these 

 birds I have seen myself and I have examined specimens taken at Rockport and 

 Gloucester by Mr. C. R. Lamb and Mr. S. P. Fay. The months when these birds 

 are most commonly found on our coast are the winter months from January to 

 April inclusive. On May 26, 1907, I saw one immature bird in a flock of a hun- 

 dred Herring Gulls on the beach at Ipswich. For August, I have two records: 

 one for August 21, 1913, seen at Clark's Pond, Ipswich, by Mrs. Edmund Bridge, 

 and one immature bird seen by myself at Ipswich Beach on August 15, 1918. 

 This surprising increase in numbers on the coast is partly real and partly appar- 

 ent, a subject that is fully discussed in Chapter II. 



