q6 memoirs of the nuttall ornithological club. 



II. Larus argentatus Briinn. 

 Herring Gull. Sea Gull. Gray Gull. 



Abundant winter resident. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



August i8, 1902, one seen, Cambridge, W. Deane. 



October 15 — May 8. 

 May 20, 1905, flock of eight seen, Fresli Pond, G. C. Deane. 



At certain places along our coast, such as Ipswich and the shores of Cape 

 Cod, a good many immature and barren Herring Gulls spend the entire summer.^ 

 The breeding adults, with their dark brown young, also begin to arrive from the 

 North at these and other coastwise localities early in September. Herring Gulls 

 seldom visit land-locked waters in Massachusetts, however, between May 1 5 and 

 October 1 5 following. About the latter date a few birds appear in the Back 

 Bay Basin, but they do not become really numerous there until the loth to the 

 15th of November. From this time until well into April they are almost con- 

 stantly present, enlivening the wide expanse of water or fields of drifting ice 

 by their picturesque forms and graceful flight. Their numbers vary greatly 

 from clay to day, according to the tides, the weather, and the condition and 

 extent of the ice. Sometimes there are but a dozen or so, ordinarily from 

 fifty to a hundred, on exceptional occasions from three to four or five hundred. 

 From the Basin they follow up the Charles River to Watertown ; and when 

 Fresh, Spy, and the Mystic Ponds are open they resort to them daily in consid- 

 erable numbers, passing over the intervening land at a great height in compact 

 flocks which are sometimes mistaken for those of migrating Geese. In calm 

 weather they alight in these ponds, forming beds at a safe distance from shore 

 and spending hours at a time preening their feathers or floating idly on the smooth 

 surface. When there is a strong wind they scatter and fly about in search of 



1 In his ' Birds of Essex County ' (Memoirs of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, no. III. Birds of 

 Essex County, Massachusetts, 1905, 91-98), published since the above passage was written, Dr. C. 

 W. Townsend gives a full and most interesting account of his observations on the Herring Gulls at 

 Ipswich. Among the birds present there in early summer he regularly finds a varying but usually small 

 percentage of adults in full nuptial plumage. For reasons which he gives at considerable length he 

 considers it "reasonable to suppose that some, perhaps only a few, of these Gulls are daily excursion- 

 ists from their breeding places [on the Maine coast] to the beaches of Essex County for the food to 

 be found there." 



