126 THE GULLS 



[558-80 mm.]. The head, neck, lower back and tail, and the whole of the under 

 parts are of a pure white, while the back and wings are black, relieved by white 

 tips to the scapulars, secondaries, and primaries. The white tip to the outermost 

 primary is extremely small, but below this is a large subterminal white spot or 

 " mirror." By the end of the summer the tips of most if not all the primaries have 

 been lost by abrasion. The beak is yellow, with a red spot at the gonys of the 

 mandible ; the rim of the eyelid is vermilion, the iris pale yellow, and the legs and 

 toes are yellow. After the autumn moult the white of the crown and hind-neck 

 is marked by ash-brown striations. The juvenile plumage is of a sepia-brown, 

 dull white margins to the feathers giving a mottled appearance to the upper parts, 

 save the head and neck, which are obscurely striated, while the under parts are 

 ash-brown. The beak is of a dark brown colour, the iris dark brown ; there is no 

 orbital ring, and the legs and toes are brown. It is to be distinguished from the 

 herring-gull by the conspicuously smaller beak, and the fact that the pale margins 

 to the feathers are narrow and of uniform width, while the ground colour is much 

 darker : the marginal pattern of dull white is especially well shown, for the purposes 

 of comparison on the long inner secondaries. The adult dress is gradually assumed 

 by a whitening of the under parts, rump, and tail, and the gradual darkening of 

 the back. But the process of transformation takes about four years to complete. 

 Hence immature birds cannot be accurately described, owing to the gradual trans- 

 formation. The black, white-tipped primaries do not appear till the assumption 

 of the adult dress. The young in down are buffish grey with irregular dusky bars, 

 and spots on the sides of the head and crown, a long " horse-shoe " on the throat, and 

 obscure, irregular bands on the back, representing disintegrated stripes, [w. P. P.] 

 2. Distribution. In the British Isles this species is less widely distributed 

 than the herring-gull, for not only is it absent from the flat shores of Lincolnshire 

 and East Anglia as a breeding species, but, with the exception of a solitary nesting 

 record from Kent, and a few pairs breeding among the herring-gulls in Hampshire, 

 it is hardly known to nest along the shores of the English Channel east of Devon. 

 In Wales there is a colony on a bog ten miles from the sea, and in Cumberland, and 

 to some extent on the Northumbrian moors also, it is a common breeding species 

 inland as well as on the coast. There is also a large colony on the Fames, and it 

 is plentiful up the west coast of Scotland and the Inner Hebrides, but less numerous 

 on the Atlantic side of the Outer Hebrides and the east coast of the mainland. 

 Northward it nests in the Shetlands and Orkneys, as well as in the Faeroes. In 

 Ireland it is much less common than the herring-gull, but has been found breeding 



