652 MEDITERRANEAN BLACK-HEADED GULL. 



Jean-de-Luz, ten miles south of Biarritz. In 1868 I met with it, 

 apparently breeding, on the marshes below Huelva in the south- 

 west of Spain, and birds — with eggs said to belong to them — were 

 brought to me from the low islets at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, 

 where, on May 9th 1883, Mr. Abel Chapman shot a bird and ob- 

 tained two clutches; while in May of the present year (1889) 

 Messrs. H. E. Dresser and Hanbury Barclay found a considerable 

 colony in that locality. Many breeding-places doubtless exist in the 

 Mediterranean, as the bird is plentiful, but none are positively known 

 until the vicinity of Smyrna is reached ; there are also some on the 

 shores of the Black Sea. 



• Mr. Dresser tells me that the nests were fairly solid structures of 

 small twigs, and were placed on the mud, generally under or near 

 low scrubby bushes ; the eggs, from 2-3 in number, are rather paler 

 and more inclined to stone-colour than those of L. ridibujidus^ though 

 very similar in general appearance, and, strange to say, they are 

 slightly smaller: average measurements 2 by i'4 in. In Spain, and 

 also in the Black Sea, colonies of this species are generally close to 

 those of the Slender-billed Gull, L. gelastes, a bird which lays much 

 larger eggs — like light varieties of those of the Sandwich Tern in 

 colour — and resembles L. ridibundus in the pattern of its long 

 wings, though it differs from it in never assuming a hood. 



The adult in breeding-plumage has' the head jet-black ; mantle 

 grey, of about the same tint as in L. ridibundus ; primaries greyish- 

 white with merely a narrow black streak along the outer web of the 

 first ; tail and under parts white ; bill coral-red with a darkish band 

 in front of the angle; legs yellowish-brown. Length 17 in.; wing 

 1 1 "5 in. Birds which have assumed the black hood for the first time 

 exhibit black streaks next the shafts of primaries 1-3 and black bars 

 on 1-5 until the following autumn. In winter, as usual, the hood 

 disappears, and the head is merely streaked with dark brown, thickest 

 about the eye and the ear-coverts. In the bird of the year, like 

 that in the British section of our Natural History Museum, tJie first 

 five primaries '\\2i\e. the outer webs, the shafts, and the greater portion 

 of the inner webs dark brozcn on both upper and under sides, laith 

 ?iearly white edges; whereas in the young of Z. ridibundus the shafts 

 and contiguous portions of the inner webs are white with dark 

 margins. On the wing, when seen from below, these distinctions 

 are very noticeable ; as is also the greater robustness of the bill in 

 L. mela7iocephalus. 



