BLACK-HEADED GULL. 327 



mere, where their nests were seen by Mr. Norgate, but 

 they did not return to breed there in 1884, nor have 

 they done so since. 



Near the centre of the county is the ancient and 

 celebrated Scoulton gullery. This colony has been so 

 often described, and Mr. Stevenson, as before stated, has 

 left such an excellent account of it in the "Trans, of 

 the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists Society," vol. i., 

 1871-72, pp. 22-30, that I must refer the reader to his 

 description. Here the birds in the present day at least 

 meet with considerate treatment, and their laying 

 powers are not unduly taxed, while the nature of their 

 breeding-place, a boggy island of some forty acres in 

 extent, surrounded by a lake of about thirty acres, the 

 whole girt by a sheltering belt of plantation, admits of 

 their being effectually protected from molestation. The 

 "pewits," as they used always to be called, arrive 

 about the 7th or 9th March; the first eggs are 

 generally produced about the middle of March, and 

 none are taken after a certain date, which varies 

 according as the season is early or late. In 1889, no 

 eggs were taken after the 24th May ; towards the end of 

 July the gulls take their departure ; and on the 1st of 

 August, as a rule, the mere has regained its wonted 

 quiet. About nine or ten thousand eggs are now taken, 

 the number of birds for the last few years has been very 

 equal, and their chief enemies appear to be the rats 

 which destroy the eggs, and the pike which prey upon 

 the young. The pike might be removed from the lake 

 to great advantage, and it is doubtless owing to their 

 incautious introduction in 1864 that the various species 

 of duck, and especially the little grebes which formerly 

 bred there, have forsaken the locality. Part of the 

 " hearth," as the island in the lake is called, is too boggy 

 to allow of the men gathering the eggs, and affords a 

 safe nesting-place for a portion of the gulls as it did for 

 the wild fowl which formerly nested there. 



The view of the "hearth" and gulls at Scoulton, 

 which forms the frontispiece of the present volume, was 

 taken by Mr. Joseph Wolf on the occasion of a visit paid 

 by him to the gullery, on the 26th June, 1872, in com- 

 pany with Mr. Stevenson, Prof. Newton^ and the late 



