LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL. 337 



LARUS FUSCUS, Linnaeus.' 

 LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL. 



The remaining species of gulls are especially marine 

 in their habits, haunting the sea and its shore, save 

 under exceptional circumstances; their presence in- 

 land being due either to abundance of food or stress 

 of weather. " With strong winds blowing from south, 

 round by west to north-west," Mr Patterson tells 

 me, in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth, they " do 

 not, as a rule, get many gulls on the coast ; but, with 

 a heavy wind blowing from north-west to north, a host 

 of gulls of various species may be looked for work- 

 ing laboriously along shore, and a heavy depression, with 

 rain, often induces the gulls to fly inland. An easterly 

 gale seems to upset their cautious self-preservative ways, 

 and they line the coast, especially during the latter part 

 of the year, when, sailing along in graceful flight, they 

 speckle the dark trough of the curling wave, or mount 

 above its white crest just as one imagines the breaking- 

 surf is about to swoop down upon and tumble them, 

 wet, bedraggled masses of crumpled feathers, on the 

 weed-lined strand. 'Grey,' black-backs, common, and 

 herring gulls form the bulk of these contingents, the 

 first named being the most numerous by far.* During 

 south-east winds considerable numbers of gulls hang 

 round about the harbour's mouth, and in late autumn, 

 say October, the little gull may very likely be met with, 

 being not so rare as is generally supposed. During the 

 herring season, of course a quantity of offal drifts out of 

 the harbour on the ebb, and collects round about the 

 piers at the entrance to the river, or floats outwards to 

 sea ; this draws together at almost any time a number 

 of hungry Laridce. But now that fish offal has a market 

 value for manure, and the facilities for trucking at the 

 fish wharf have rendered it worth preserving, the quantity 

 of fragments falling to the gulls has materially de- 

 creased ; these, when the boats used to land their ' prime ' 



* The immature greater and lesser black-backed and herring 

 gulls are alike known as " grey gulls." 

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