GLAUCOUS-GULL 177 



sexes will pursue the nest plunderer for hours. 1 As brooding-spots 

 are found in both sexes according to Naumann, it is probable that 

 they share the duties of incubation. He also gives the period as four 

 weeks, which is probably approximately correct. 



The downy young are, according to Seebohm, like those of Larus 

 affinis, but the dark markings on the back are fewer and fainter. 

 Saunders describes them as stone-grey, with a slight tinge of yellowish 

 buff above : the head spotted with black, and the back mottled with 

 ash-brown. In the Spitzbergen group most of them are hatched by 

 the end of June or early in July. They leave the nest as soon as they 

 can fly, and walk freely about the rocks. A young bird taken from the 

 nest on Jan Mayen was visited for several days by its parents, and on 

 one occasion followed them to the sea for six hundred paces. This 

 bird usually became excited on hearing the call of its parents, while 

 two others, their heads bent sideways, listened with indifference. 



Hardly anything comes amiss to this powerful bird in the way of 

 food. When a whale is being "flensed" he is in close attendance, 

 swooping down on the floating fragments and carrying them off' on the 

 wing. Colonel Feilden relates how two reindeer shot by him were 

 reduced to hides and skeletons in an extraordinarily short space of 

 time by these birds. Almost any kind of carrion, and the excrement 

 of the walrus, seal, and polar bear, is also devoured. When the 

 carcass of one of the larger mammals is discovered, the eyes are first 

 picked out and access thus obtained to the brain. This method of 

 procedure is shared with other large carrion-eating birds, such as the 

 Ravens and Vultures. In the breeding season vast numbers of eggs 

 and young birds are taken, and it has been seen in hot pursuit of a 

 little-auk, a young Briinnich's guillemot, and a wounded ivory-gull. 

 One killed in Norfolk was eating a dead coot, and another contained 

 a whole golden-plover, while a bird shot by Captain Ross disgorged a 

 little-auk, and on being opened another quite whole was found in its 

 stomach ; but healthy birds are rarely interfered with. Fish of all 



1 Zoologist, 1890, 49. 

 VOL. III. Z 



