COMMON, HERRING, AND BLACKBACKED-GULLS 161 



rendered by different individuals. Other renderings are skiah ! and 

 Tdjah or klijrrah, also both by Germans, Naumann and Droste- 

 Hulshoff. 



The corresponding note of the herring and lesser blackbacked 

 has been figured as kiow. This, or quee-ow, is my own rendering. 

 The sound will be better recognised by the description of it as a 

 plaintive mewing note, but with something free and wild about it 

 that is not reminiscent of the domestic cat upon the hearth. It is 

 one of those singular sounds that seems to voice the spirit of the 

 place in which one hears it often uttered, the mid-air breezy planes 

 above tall cliffs or rocky isles between the blues of sea and sky. 



The rendering of the kindred note of the great blackback is 

 kgau or kjauvihs, neither of which convey much. 



Other notes are uttered by the species which have yet to be 

 closely studied. I have heard from the lesser blackbacked a note 

 something like or ! or yor ! It was uttered by one of a pair while its 

 mate sounded the usual explosive ow! When I drew nearer their 

 young, both uttered an excited ow ! rapidly repeated. The same 

 species has a lower note, with which the ow ! is sometimes intermixed, 

 like quk, guk, quk. This, intensified, is the exultant scream flung forth 

 by the birds when suddenly they stretch out their necks in the re- 

 gurgitative manner aforesaid. The scream begins often with a sound 

 like oo-w%rrr; then follow the quks, and occasionally a few cackling 

 owsf Corresponding to the yor! of the blackback is the ee-horr or 

 quee-hor of the herring, which I heard uttered by a few birds when 

 sailing, while their fellows uttered the more usual ows! I have 

 not noted the sounds composing the scream of this species. 

 Naumann makes it a repetition of its ordinary note, the kiow or 

 kjow. According to A. von Homeyer, the bellow of the great 

 blackback is its alarm-note, a rapid volley of loud ogs. 1 From this it 

 appears that the two species last-mentioned use different kinds of 

 notes in their scream, which is, on the face of it, somewhat impro- 



1 Naumann, Vogel Mitteleuropas, xi. 263. 

 VOL. III. X 



