BLACK-HEADED GULL. 325 



pearance we have only to bear in mind the treatment 

 they received. In 1835, although the gulls did not arrive 

 till about the 15th March, and commenced laying about 

 the 6th April (the practice being to take their eggs till 

 the end of June), on the 12th July they had all left the 

 warren "more than a week ! " No wonder that in 1837, 

 on the 3rd May, only a few pairs had commenced laying, 

 and the birds appeared very unsettled ; and although 

 only a few eggs were allowed to be taken that year, it 

 is probable Mr. Salmon remained at Thetford long 

 enough to witness the practical destruction of the 

 colony. Of the subsequent history of the colony I know 

 nothing till the notes of its final extinction supplied me 

 by Lord Walsingham, which will follow shortly. 



Professor Newton informs me that Spinks, a war- 

 rener at Elveden, told him in 1853 that he formerly 

 (before 1829) lived at Stanford, and that near the lodge, 

 on the warren, he might have got a tumbrel load of 

 " coddy rnoddies' " eggs. From Lord Walsingham I 

 learn that the black- headed gulls have been once or 

 twice re-attracted to Stanford by putting down a few 

 eggs obtained from Scoulton, and he thinks this could 

 be done again. A few years ago some twenty pairs 

 established themselves spontaneously at Stanford, and 

 bred for about three years. Lord Walsingham believes 

 they were driven away by otters, and his attempts to 

 bring them back by putting down eggs were only suc- 

 cessful for one year. 



It was probably to one of these latter temporary visits 

 to its old nesting-place that Mr. Stevenson refers when 

 he says in his diary that on a visit to Thetford warren, 

 on 16th April, 1870, Smith, the warrener, told him that 

 " the black-headed gull still nests at Stanford." 



Formerly, when Lord Walsingham was very young, 

 he remembers the black-headed gull breeding at 

 Tomston regularly, but in small numbers ; after they 

 had ceased to do so, by putting eggs from Scoulton in 

 old coots' nests, he induced a few pairs to return and 

 breed, but after a year or two they left the place again. 

 Another small colony frequently bred at Bagmoor, a small 

 pond on the Thetford and Stanford road; there were 

 from five to twenty pairs or rather more. This pond 



