416 LARID.A 
clothed in a richly variegated yellowish-brown down (Plate 
XULIMT., figs. 1 and 2). 
Many gulleries are protected, and the eggs are collected 
for culinary purposes, the birds continuing to lay after their 
clutches have been repeatedly removed. 
Black-headed Gulls, hke other creatures living together 
in large and densely-thronged communities,' often enter into 
combat, severely pecking and even killing one another to 
secure the most favourable nesting-sites. The young are 
often knocked out of their nests, and many of them, when 
creeping about in search of hiding-places, are destroyed by 
rats and other enemies. 
Rooks, Daws, Black-backed Gulls, and Hawks, are 
vigorously assailed and even killed by the members of a 
gullery, and I have several times found dead Jackdaws and 
Rooks, especially when the gulleries were in well-wooded 
districts. In such places the Gulls may be seen alighting on 
the branches of trees. 
There are many gulleries in the eastern and southern 
maritime counties of England, the most westerly of which 
is in Poole in Dorset. Some of the inland counties, certain 
districts in Wales, and Walney Island off Lancashire, also 
harbour colonies. 
Great assemblages exist in Scotland, notably at Wig- 
town, Lanark, Loch Lomond, Moray Firth, and northward 
to the Shetlands. 
This Gull is an abundant breeding-species in Ireland, 
and maritime and inland counties are both visited ; in fact, 
the great central plain accommodates vast numbers. 
Among marine stations may be mentioned the Blasket 
Islands, the most westerly land in Europe, or, as the 
Islanders put it to me, when I visited them, ‘‘ The nearest 
land to America ! ”’ 
Many former gulleries have now ceased to exist in the 
British Isles, while others have newly sprung up. For as 
man from time to time appropriated their breeding-grounds 
for building or cultivating purposes, the birds en masse 
simply changed their quarters, and so their numbers are not 
decreasing. 
' In densely-populated gulleries it is most difficult to avoid treading 
on the eggs and fledglings, and in taking photographs one has to be care- 
ful first to inspect the surroundings, lest the diverging legs of the camera 
be thrust into and damage the contents of adjoining nests, while the 
operator manipulates his instrument under cover of his focussing cloth. 
