26 NESTS AND EGGS OF 



they catch them by patient watching at their burrows, and will perse- 

 vere for fifteen minutes to swallow a squealing young rabbit, and finally 

 fly away with the hind feet protruding. The dead bodies of Murres 

 are also eaten ; they detach pieces of flesh by backing away and 

 dragging the body, meanwhile shaking their head, till a piece breaks 

 oflf." 



The eggs are deposited as early as the first part of May on the 

 Farallones, and laying is sometimes continued into July. The usual 

 complement is three ; but from constant robberies by the eggers, who 

 collect eggs for the San Francisco market, often only two are laid. The 

 same variation of ground-color and markings are to be found in these 

 eggs as is common to all those of the gulls ; light grayish olive, clay 

 color, bluish-white and deep yellowish-brown, spotted and blotched 

 with umber-brown, blackish and lilac of varying shades. The average 

 size of fifty specimens is, 2.76 x 1.94; the largest 2.99 x 2.01 ; the small- 

 est 2.56 x 1.89. 



[50.] Lams affinis Reinh. [665.] 



Siberian Gnll. 



Hab. Greenland; Asia; Europe, southward in winter to North Africa. 



The Siberian Gull is a rare or occasional visitor in Greenland, 

 whereupon it claims a place in the fauna of North America. It 

 breeds in the extreme north of Europe, notably on the shores and 

 in the lagoons of the Petchora River in the northern part of Euro- 

 pean Russia. The eggs are said not to differ from those of the 

 Herring Gull. 



51. Larus arg^entatus Brunn [666] 



Herring Gull. 



Hab. Old World, south to the Azores; Cumberland Sound; occasional on the eastern coast of the 

 United States. 



The European Herring Gull is known as an occasional visitor to 

 the coast of Eastern North America. On the Azores, a cluster of nine 

 islands in the Atlantic, eight hundred miles due west of Portugal, this 

 Gull is very common, breeding on some of the islands in immense 

 numbers. 



In Great Britain it is a familiar bird everywhere. It breeds in the 

 islands on the coast of Scotland, especially the Hebrides, Shetland, 

 Orkney and the Faroe Islands ; thence northward to Iceland. One of 

 the most common Gulls along the coast of Norway, as far as North 

 Cape, where they breed by thousands. Its nesting habits and its 

 eggs are the same as those of the American bird, smithsonianus . Eggs 

 2.91 x 1.98. 



