188 THE GULLS 



"dock"! 1 It is also used by itself. The second is a petulant little infan- 

 tile note, which I find figured in one of my note-books as keee-kee-ke, 

 in another as kwee-kiouh, neither of which, however, recalls to me even 

 faintly the actual sound. I have heard it following an outburst of 

 kittiwakes, and also interspersed among them. It was uttered by 

 birds when collecting nest material on the cliff, and by one was 

 intended to be a menace. It was also uttered by birds on the wing. 

 According to Naumann, it is heard only at the breeding-place. The 

 meaning to be attached to this and the other two notes has yet to be 

 precisely determined. The same, indeed, may be said of the notes of 

 all the Gulls. 



Nest-building begins in the first half of May, or later according to 

 the latitude. At the Flamborough colonies the bird had in 1911 already 

 set to work by May 9. Any ledge on the face of a cliff large enough 

 to accommodate the nest will satisfy a kittiwake. If there are remains 

 of the old nest, the new is built upon it, and this again, if not all 

 washed away by wind and rain, may provide a foundation for the 

 next season's nest. In time, therefore, the structure may assume large 

 dimensions. As a rule, however, nests do not survive the winter, 

 though they are substantial structures. They are built mainly of 

 compressed mud and seaweed or grass, and lined with finer material, 

 usually grass, which is frequently added to during the course of the 

 season. The sides of the nest become thickly saturated with the bird's 

 excreta. One nest I saw at the Bass Rock in August had hanging 

 over the edge of it a dead kittiwake, so coated with white excreta 

 that it looked like a petrified bird. 



Both sexes share in the building of the nest, and their method of 

 working, which I had ample opportunities of watching at Bempton, is 

 much more thorough than that of other Gulls. One bird usually remains 

 on the ledge while the other flies off for material, which it finds either 

 on the sea, the shore, or the earth-covered places on the face or top 

 of the cliff'. At Bempton I saw, at a distance of a few yards, half 

 a dozen birds and more at a time on a wet clayey patch near the top 



1 Viiyel Mitteleuropas, xi. 290. 



