THE GULLS 237 



in similar habitats in the Canadian north. The rosy gull breeds almost 

 in a habitat suitable for Bonaparte's gull, yet does exactly the opposite 

 in winter — goes north into what to a human is the most horrible area 

 of the world, excepting the upland gale-swept below-zero ice of the 

 antarctic continent. 



John Murdoch ( 1 885) found that Point Barrow, Alaska, was a main 

 concentration point for rosy gulls between 28 September and 22 October 

 1 881; he took "more . . . than there were before in all the museums 

 of the world put together" and the birds were all moving north-east. 

 He saw no more until the following 21 September, when they were 

 again abundant. The neighbourhood of Barrow has remained an 

 important fly way for rosy gulls; birds have been noted there in 

 Septembers and Octobers ever since, always flying east. Charles D. 

 Brower, who lived at Barrow until his death there in 1945, told A. M. 

 Bailey (1948) that "a few are occasionally seen in the spring and they 

 are irregular in the fall. However, thousands appear on gray days in 

 September and October, always on a northwest wind. . . . They are 

 excellent eating and often provide a welcome addition to our arctic 

 fare. They come by thousands in the fall, and then suddenly disappear 

 as quickly as they arrived, to be seen no more until the following year." 



Sabine's gull, Xema sabini, is as strikingly beautiful as the rosy gull, 

 having a rich dark grey hood edged with a fine black line, forked tail, 

 black primaries, pale grey mantle, and white triangle on the wings. 

 In flight both gulls are, like the other arctic gull, the ivory-, graceful 

 and tern-like. Sabine's was first discovered on the northern shores of 

 Baffin's Bay, on what are now known as the Sabine Islands in Melville 

 Bay, north-west Greenland, by E. Sabine on John Ross's first expedition 

 in 1 818. (No ornithologist has visited these islands since.) The next 

 example known to science was shot in Belfast Bay on 18 September 

 1822. Since then Sabine's gull has been found to be a rare (though not 

 rare in the way the rosy gull is rare) bird, breeding fairly widely in 

 the High Arctic, and wintering somewhat mysteriously on the Pacific 

 coasts of North and South America, and on the North Atlantic coasts. 

 By 'somewhat mysteriously' we mean that the main wintering-place 

 of the Atlantic population is not properly known, though it may well 

 be largely in the Gulf of Gascony (in the Bay of Biscay). The main 

 wintering-place of the Pacific population appears to be oflf the coast 

 of Peru! Whether the Bay of Biscay really is a wintering-place remains 

 to be proved; if it is, the birds seem to start their return passage 

 early, before Christmas (as many petrels do), and nobody knows 



