LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL. 



465 



the family about the garden, uttering a peculiar cry, which 

 always means that he is quite ready for a meal. Indeed, he 

 has a most voracious appetite, and the capacity of his throat 

 is truly astonishing ; he has repeatedly swallowed, quite 

 whole, with beak, claws, and feathers, various small birds 

 which had been shot and thrown to him. Mice, or other 

 small quadrupeds, appear equally to suit his taste ; and, 

 though he has no objection to butcher"'s meat, he seems rather 

 to prefer small animals, notwithstanding the hair, feathers, 

 &c., which sometimes give him not a little trouble to dispose 

 of satisfactorily. The way in which he remedies this diffi- 

 culty suggested itself the first time a bird was given him ; I 

 believe it was a skylark. After some ineffectual efforts to 

 swallow it, he paused for a moment ; and then, as if suddenly 

 recollecting himself, he ran off full speed to a pan of water, 

 shook the bird about in it until well soaked, and immediately 

 gulped it down without further trouble. Since that time, he 

 invariably has recourse to the same expedient in similar cases." 

 Mr. Selby says, that a Gull of this species which he kept in 

 his garden from its youth, for the sake of witnessing the 

 changes in its plumage during its progress to maturity, which, 

 as in the other large species, occupy three years, made no 

 difficulty of swallowing whole young plovers of both kinds, 

 when fully half grown. 



The Lesser Black-backed Gull is a constant resident in 

 Ireland and Wales, on the coasts of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, 

 Hampshire, Sussex, Suffolk, and Norfolk. On the North- 

 umberland coast, Mr. Hewitson observes, that these birds 

 " appear to prefer those islands which are the most rocky, and 

 upon which there is the least herbage, and though they have 

 their choice, very few of them deposit their eggs upon the 

 grass, and yet they rarely lay them without making a tole- 

 rably thick nest for their reception ; it is of grass, loosely 

 bundled together in large pieces, and placed in some slight 



VOL. III. 2 H 



