488 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
parents when the sun was intense as has already been stated in this 
paper. They also used driftwood or anything else offering shade. 
The more developed juvenals, especially on warm days, did a large 
amount of bathing at the water’s edge. Still older young would 
swim farther out from shore in bathmg. When the definitive 
feathers are developing and begin to burst from their sheaths, much 
time is spent in dressing the plumage with the beak. Whether the 
opening of the feathers is facilitated by the feather manipulation 
could not be determined. 
VI. DEVELOPMENT AFTER HATCHING. 
A detailed account of the hatching and early development of the 
young after hatching has been given by Dutcher and Baily. 
Growth is rapid, but the young are in the down plumage for a 
number of days after hatching. It is not in the province of this 
paper to give a detailed description of the plumage, and the reader 
is referred to the account given by Dutcher and Baily? (p. 422 with 
pl. 22). The sequence of plumages has been described by Dwight.’ 
The dark plumage of the juvenal gull is replaced after the first winter 
by a lighter and less mottled plumage with quite a bit of individual 
variation in the rate of change, judging from my captive gulls. At 
two years, my gulls had lost most of their juvenal coloration. Strange 
to say a wild gull obtained in the winter of what must have been its 
second year, was somewhat behind the others when they were 2 years 
old. None of my gulls had acquired at two years as advanced a plum- 
age as that described by Dwight for herring gulls of that age. Sharpe‘ 
describes progressive changes extending through the first five au- 
tumns, and he says that the “quills” have more dark coloring at the 
fifth autumn than appears in older birds. The following quotation 
from Townsend’s account of the herring gull agrees well with my 
observations: 
It is superficially evident from the large number of dark and mottled birds at all 
seasons, that it takes several years to attain the beautiful adult plumage. What 
appears to be a dark tip to the tail, so prominent in young birds of a certain age, is 
often retained after increasing whiteness has set the stamp of years, but it is entirely 
absent in the snowy white tail of the fully matured bird. Birds with pure white 
tails with the exception of a slight central sprinkling of dusky brown and with a few 
faint gray streaks in the upper breast, are not uncommon. 
My gulls acquired a yellow iris in the second winter, but in their 
third fall they still had the bill colored as in the first year. Accord- 
ing to Astley,® the bill does not become yellow until the fourth year, 
1 Op. cit., pp. 421-422. 
2 Op. cit., p. 422. 
’ Dwight, J., The sequence of plumages of the Laridae (gulls and terns): Auk, 1901, vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 
ee R. B., Catalogue of birds in the British Museum. Vol. 25, 1896, p. 264. 
5 Astley, H. D., My birds in freedom and captivity, p. 160. E. P. Dutton & Co., London, New York, 
J.M. Dent & Co. 
