434 LARTD.F.. 



brown hood in summer is easily recognised and well-known. 

 It frequents all parts of the coast during- winter, but being 

 decidedly a marsh breeder, assembles in great numbers early 

 in spring, year after year, constantly, at various favourable 

 localities for the purpose of incubation. These birds are 

 abundant at the mouth of the Thames, both in Kent and in 

 Essex, but the most so in the latter county, breeding by 

 hundreds on some of the low flat islands on the coast, and in 

 the marshes of the interior. 



A breeding station in Norfolk, at a place called Scoulton 

 Mere, where Sir Thomas Browne says this species bred con- 

 stantly in his time, three hundred years ago, is thus described 

 by the authors of the catalogue of Norfolk and Suffolk Birds. 

 " Near the centre of the county of Norfolk, at the distance 

 of about twenty- five miles from the sea, and two from Hing- 

 ham, is a large piece of water called Scoulton Mere. In the 

 middle of this mere there is a boggy island of seventy acres 

 extent, covered with reeds, and on which there are some 

 birch and willow trees. There is no river communicating 

 between the mere and the sea. This mere has from time 

 immemorial been a favourite breeding-spot of the Brown- 

 headed Gull. These birds begin to make their appearance 

 at Scoulton about the middle of February ; and by the end 

 of the first week in March the great body of them have 

 always arrived. They spread themselves over the neighbour- 

 ing country to the distance of several miles in search of food, 

 following the plough as regularly as Rooks ; and, from the 

 great quantity of worms and grubs which they devour, they 

 render essential service to the farmer. If the spring is mild, 

 the Gulls begin to lay about the middle of April ; but the 

 month of May is the time at which the eggs are found in the 

 greatest abundance. At this season a n)an and three boys 

 find constant employment in collecting them, and they have 

 sometimes gathered upwards of a thousand in a day. These 



