BIRDS OF LOCH AND MOUNTAIN 123 



fish thrown to them by the spectators. Besides 

 the river Thames, another favourite resort is St. 

 James's Park, where they mix with the wildfowl ; 

 and once, when the pond there had been dried, I 

 saw them busily engaged in catching small rain- 

 bow trout which had somehow escaped from a 

 pond in Buckingham Palace grounds. 



Some of the Gulls have their summer plumage 

 by the beginning of February, but it is not until 

 a month later that the majority don their summer 

 dress. About the first week in March they leave the 

 sea coast for the inland bogs and lochs, where they 

 construct their nests, but stragglers may be seen 

 by the sea throughout the summer. These, how- 

 ever, are probably unpaired birds. The nests are 

 commenced about the second week of April, to- 

 wards the end of which month the first eggs are 

 deposited. 



Should the first batch be harried, as is often 

 the case in spite of the Wild Birds Protection Act, 

 which is in force in most counties, the birds will 

 lay a second and even a third time ; and I have 

 often found freshly laid eggs towards the end of 

 June, by which time the earlier hatched-off birds 

 were quite strong on the wing. The nest is some- 

 times rather a bulky structure, at others merely a 

 slight depression lined with a few pieces of dead 

 grass and heather, and is almost invariably situated 

 in the vicinity of a swamp or loch. 



The usual number of eggs is three. Four are 

 said to be occasionally laid, but I have never seen 

 a nest containing the latter number. They vary 

 greatly in colour and markings, at times being of 

 a very dark brown ground colour, with even darker 

 spots and blotches of the same shade ; at others 



