94 



MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



On December ii, 1897, I saw an Iceland Gull in Fresh Pond, about three 

 hundred yards from shore, off the end of Hemlock Point. It was so much 

 smaller and lighter colored than any of the young Herring Gulls which were 

 swimming close about it that it attracted my attention the moment it came 

 within the field of my glass, a small telescope of considerable power, through 

 which I watched it for half an hour or more. It was a young bird lacking all 

 traces of bluish on the mantle and having the primaries (which it was obliging 

 enough to twice display by slowly raising and opening its wings) of a nearly uni- 

 form light brownish color. 



In the neighborhood of Eastport, Maine, and St. John, New Brunswick, 

 young Iceland Gulls occur rather commonly in winter in company with about 

 equal numbers of adult Kumlien's Gulls. I have never seen a fully mature bird 

 of the former species from any part of the Atlantic coast south of Newfound- 

 land, and the young of the latter remain unknown or, at all events, unrecog- 

 nized. These facts have led me to suspect that at least some of the young 

 birds which pass as leucopteriis may really be kumlieni. For the purpose of 

 investigating this question I have brought together a rather large series of 

 specimens, but such study as I have been able to give them has failed to 

 produce any definite results. The chief difficulty has been that I have found 

 no opportunity of comparing them with fully identified young of Icjicoptenis, 

 for all the supposed specimens of the latter which I have examined came from 

 localities where kumlieni is also known or likely to occur. 



Several years ago, Mr. Gerritt S. Miller, Jr., was kind enough to take two 

 skins, which illustrate the extremes of dark and light coloring (there is much 

 variation in this respect) represented by my series, to England where he 

 showed them to Mr. Howard Saunders, who, under date of July 20, 1894, 

 wrote me as follows regarding them : " Miller turns up with the Gulls and 

 we went over them and the British Museum series — not a grand one, but 

 sufficient. On the evidence I think he [Mr. Miller] agrees with me that your 



birds are both L. leiicopterus and that young kumlieni is yet to be found 



Why kumlieni adult should come down to Bay of Fundy, etc., and not the 



young, is a puzzle As for young kumlieni, I expect it will prove to be, as 



Kumlien says, a very dark bird, like young of L. glauceseens." ^ 



1 In the Auk for January, 1906, Dr. Jonathan Dwight describes and discusses (on pages 36-41) 

 what he feels "convinced is the undescribed plumage of the young" Kumlien's Gull. I am by no 

 means satisfied that his young birds (one of which I have examined) are really knmlinii, although I 

 consider it probable that in referring them to this species he has made no mistake. 



