282 THE HEREING GULL. 



were eagerly sought after by some of the fishermen on the 

 Berwickshire coast, but now they do not appear to go often 

 on egging expeditions. Mr. Hardy notes that about forty 

 years ago " the fishers at Burnmouth went twice a week in 

 * Gull time ' round the rocks which the Gulls frequent to 

 get their eggs. They sometimes got as many as eighty or 

 ninety in a morning, and found them quite as edible as hen 

 eggs. About the above-mentioned time a very adventure- 

 some boy named Kerr — son of William Kerr, fisherman, 

 Burnmouth — was killed by falling from a steep yellow- 

 coloured rock called Dunkirk, on Fairneyside Farm. He 

 was hung round with eggs in handkerchiefs, and had a 

 bonnetful also, when the portion of the rock he held by 

 proved treacherous and down he fell on the black rocks 

 below and was killed. The only expression his three com- 

 panions heard was ' ae Johnnie.' Some time before this 

 two boys were killed at St. Abb's Head by falling over 

 the rocks when in search of Gulls' eggs. The first notice 

 which the mother of one of them got of the accident was 

 from the children who had gone with him to the Head 

 coming home crying." 



The food of the Herring Gull consists of fish, crusta- 

 ceans, star-fishes, and other marine creatures.^ It likewise 

 feeds upon dead fish and other garbage cast ashore by the 

 waves, and also eats eggs. Mr. Hardy has known it to feed 

 upon the fragments of a bottle-nosed whale which had been 

 carted to the fields at Oldcambus for manure ; also under 

 date 1st September 1868, he writes : " At present when the 

 sea is rough the Herring Gulls are sitting on the oat stubble, 

 and sometimes I see them seated on the stocks. At Siccar 



1 Mr. Robert Gray writes : "I have repeatedly observed that on the Berwick- 

 shire coasts and elsewhere Herring Gnlls, and especially young birds, feed to a 

 great extent upon star-fishes. One of which I shot on the 11th of September 

 vomited, when it fell, ten specimens of Aster las rubens, two of which measured 

 nearly three inches across the rings." — Hist. Ber. Nat. Club, vol. vii. p. 466. 



