1914 J Strong, Habits of the Herring Gull. 39 



At 1:45 p. M., I saw the same young birds being fed again. A 

 little later, I noticed another feeding of some gulls a few days older. 

 Small fishes appeared in the food disgorged by the parent. 



In spite of the fact that the gulls seemed to settle down to normal 

 activities during my tent work, I saw surprisingly few cases, rela- 

 tively, of feeding the young. These were usually a little too far 

 away to permit close observation, and it was seldom possible to 

 determine by observation from my tent what the nature of the 

 food was. 



The stomachs of six young Herring Gulls "of different sizes" 

 as reported by Norton,^ "contained almost no fish but all contained 

 ants in varying quantities, only one being full." 



Where many young gulls occur in a relatively small area, it is 

 difficult to determine whether the adult birds always feed only 

 their own young. The small amount of evidence I obtained sug- 

 gested that the parents, usually, feed their own offspring. But it is 

 of course possible that birds usually feeding their own offspring, 

 may occasionally give food to other juvenals. 



At Gravel Island there was apparently considerable promiscuous 

 feeding according to the observations of both Ward and myself. 



I observed adult gulls alighting near close flocks of young birds 

 on a number of occasions, at Gravel Island. Each time the juve- 

 nals surrounded the adult like a pack of wolves, and it was often 

 completely hidden from my view by the struggling young gulls. 

 In Plate IX such a scene appears. Such a performance was 

 usually accompanied by considerable noise made by the hungry 

 birds. Other adult birds sometimes added to the clamor by scream- 

 ing. The general excitement is shown in the illustration just 

 mentioned. 



The period during which the young are fed is evidently a long one. 

 I saw young birds which must have been at least six weeks old, 

 and probably considerably older than this, still being fed by adult 

 birds. It is of course possible that young birds may be obtaining 

 some of their food themselves before all food giving by their parents 

 or by other adults ceases. 



On a few occasions, I saw adults apparently resenting the ap- 



1 Dutcher, W. Report of Committee oa Bird Protection. Auli, 1904, Vol. XXI, 

 No. 1, p. 164. 



