120 
rtctiardson’s sktta. 
a bird whose flight is more varied, or kept up for a °*reater 
length of time without taking rest. On the shore it runs 
about briskly, and occasionally rests itself on the sea by 
swimming. J 
They plunder other sea-birds of their eggs, like the kindred 
species, pursuing the owners thereof in the air when they see 
any food procured by them, forcing them to drop the ‘prey 
they have captured, and then seizing it themselves, their 
motto being ‘Le droit de plus fort.’ They thus attack and 
rob even the great burgomaster, as well as the inferior Kittiwake 
and the Terns. They also pick up insects, small birds and 
their eggs, and other food. 
The note is a loud harsh cry or squall, the orio-in, I 
should suppose, of the name of the bird. 
These birds build both separately and in companies—twenty, 
thirty, or forty pairs together. They make their nests on some’ 
raised part of a marshy place, or the top of an upland moorv 
waste; the heath, moss, lichens, or grass thereon being embedded 
into a nest. 
The eggs are two in number. They are laid early in June. 
They are of an olive brown colour, spotted with dark brown. 
The Aictic Gull is a bird of very neat and even elegant 
appearance. 
Male; length, one foot ten inches; bill, bluish at the base, 
which is broad, and nearly black at the tip, which is hooked,’ 
and black also on the under mandible, which is slightly angular 
and grooved on the sides for two thirds of its length. Cere, 
bluish; iris, chesnut brown. Forehead, pale yellowish; head’ 
on the sides, pale yellowish, on the crown, dark dusky brownish 
grey; neck on the sides and nape, pale yellowish, the feathers 
on the back part of the neck being stiff and pointed, and 
forming a sort of collar around it; chin and throat,’ pale 
yellowish; breast, yellowish white, passing on the lower part 
and sides into greyish brown; back, dusky grey. 
The wings reach only a little beyond the side feathers of 
the tail; greater and lesser wing coverts, dark dusky orey- 
primaries, dark dusky grey, the tips the darkest, the shafts 
almost white nearly to the tip. Tail, dark dusky grey, the 
shafts almost white nearly through their whole length; the 
central feathers, which are pointed at the ends, are three 
inches longer than those next on either side; under tail 
coverts, dark dusky grey. Legs and toes, blackish, blotted 
with yellow. The fronts are seutellated, the hinder parts 
