BONAPARTIAN GULL. 587 



Gull is rare along the Alaskan coast, being found there 

 merely as a straggler from its breeding-grounds in the 

 interior, and there is no record of its occurrence on any of 

 the islands of Bering Sea, or on the opposite coast of Siberia. 

 On migration it goes for some distance down the coast of 

 California, and is a visitor to the Great Salt Lake of Utah. 



Audubon gives the following particulars in his ' Birds of 

 America ' : " No sooner do the shad and old- wives enter the 

 bays and rivers of our Middle Districts, than this Gull begins 

 to show itself on the coast, following these fishes as if 

 dependent upon them for support, and after the 1st of April, 

 thousands of Bonapartian Gulls are seen gamboling over 

 the waters of Chesapeake Bay, and proceeding eastward, 

 keeping pace with the shoals of fishes. During my stay at 

 Eastport in Maine, in May, 1833, these Gulls were to be 

 seen in vast numbers in the harbour of Passamaquody at 

 high water, and in equal quantites at low water on all the 

 sand and mud-bars in the neighbourhood. They were ex- 

 tremely gentle, scarcely heeded us, and flew around our boats 

 so close that any number might have been procured. My 

 son John shot seventeen of them at a single discharge of 

 his double-barrelled gun, but all of them proved to be young 

 birds of the preceding year. Their stomachs were filled 

 with coleopterous insects, which they caught on the wing, or 

 picked up from the water. On the •24th of August, 1831, 

 when at Eastport with my family, I shot ten of these Gulls. 

 The adult birds had already lost their dark hood, and the 

 young were in fine plumage. In the stomachs of all were 

 shrimps, very small fishes, and fat substances. The old birds 

 were still in pairs." 



An adult male killed at Great Slave Lake at the end of 

 May, 1826, is thus described by Sir John Kichardson : — 

 "Neck, tail-coverts, tail, whole under plumage and interior 

 of the wings pure white ; hood greyish-black, extending 

 half an inch over the nape, and as much lower on the throat ; 

 mantle pearl-grey, this colour extending to the tips of the 

 tertiaries, secondaries, and two posterior primaries ; the 

 anterior border of the wing white ; the outer web of the first 



