692 THE BIRDS OF YORKSHIRE. 



these birds about a mile out at sea off Redcar, the weather being 

 calm and hazy ; on procuring a boat to ascertain the cause 

 of this great congregation of Gulls, many were found to be 

 floating on the sea, dipping their bills into the water, while 

 others were flying overhead, every few moments dashing down 

 to pick up some object from the surface ; two or three 

 specimens were procured for examination, when it was dis- 

 covered that their mouths were full of small crustaceans, 

 with which the sea was literally alive.* 



The Flamborough fishermen have told me that, when they 

 are shooting their long lines, Kittiwakes sometimes seize 

 the bait, and are dragged under water, striking examples of 

 " the biter being bit." I have a note referring to an instance 

 of one coming so close to a Redcar fishing-coble that one of 

 the men caught the bird by one wing as it hovered near. 



Inland the Kittiwake is only an occasional straggler, 

 but has been reported from various localities in the West 

 Riding ; it has occurred rarely in some of the remote dales, 

 and one was noted in April 1880, at Skipton, which flew against 

 a chimney pot and broke its wing. In the East Riding it 

 is very seldom observed away from the coast, and then only 

 occasionally on flooded lands. 



Yorkshire examples of variation in plumage are rare ; 

 one was taken near Flamborough Headland on 23rd October 

 1886, the plumage of which was entirely white, with the 

 exception of a little fawn colour on the wing coverts, with a 

 deeper fawn where the black should be on the primaries. 

 Another white specimen was obtained, also at Flamborough, 

 by Thomas Leng, four or five miles south of the Headland, 

 on I5th November 1887 ; it was nearly pure white, the outer 

 margins of the primaries and the tips of the tail feathers being 

 light drab colour. This bird was preserved by Mr. M. Bailey, 



The local names are various. The usual English appellation 

 becomes Kitti-ake at Flamborough and Bempton, in the 



* Examples of these crustaceans were afterwards submitted to the 

 Rev. Canon A. M. Norman, who determined them as Euthemisto 

 compressa, a species new to British seas. (See Naturalist, June 1892, 

 pp. 175-176.) 



