678 LARID^. 



its wing, the Editor has never seen it make the front-attack, 

 so characteristic of the Great Skua. The cry is sometimes a 

 plaintive mce ; at others a sharp mee-dwh. This species 

 feeds principally upon fish, obtained by robbing the smaller 

 Gulls, but it preys upon any wounded or disabled birds 

 which are not too big for it ; and Lord Clermont states that 

 an adult was shot on the 6th of June near the town of 

 Newry when following a plough to pick up the worms. It 

 does not dive, but it has frequently been observed to settle 

 on the water. 



The nestlings, which are covered with a sooty-black down, 

 rather lighter on the underparts, turn on their backs and 

 fight viciously with their feet when handled. When fledged, 

 the offspring of two white-breasted birds is wood-brown 

 about the head and neck ; in the young of two sooty-coloured 

 parents the prevailing hue is much darker ; and where one 

 of the old birds is dark and the other is light, there is a 

 gradation of colour. Bearing this in mind, the following 

 may be taken as a general description : — 



The young bird during its first autumn and winter has the 

 base of the beak and the cere brownish-grey ; the anterior 

 portion conspicuously curved and black; the irides dark 

 brown ; the head and neck pale brown, streaked with dark 

 brown ; the back, wing- coverts, and tertials umber-brown, 

 margined with wood-brown ; wing-primaries brownish-black, 

 tipped with pale brown, the shafts of the two outer feathers 

 white, of the others dusky ; tail-feathers pale brown at the 

 base, then brownish-black to the end ; the central pair half 

 an inch longer than the others ; neck in front, breast, belly, 

 and under tail-coverts pale yellowish wood-brown, mottled 

 and transversely barred with umber-brown ; legs and the 

 base of the toes bluish at first, afterwards yellow, the ends 

 of the toes and the anterior portion of the intervening mem- 

 branes black, whence the name of Black-toed Gull ; but this 

 is only an indication of youth, for as the bird increases 

 in age the yellow colour is lost by degrees. Later on the 

 light brown margins to the feathers disappear. When the 

 bird has acquired its full size it measures from the point of 



