time of my visit to the Fame Islands in 1895, they had totally destroyed the 

 eggs of two colonies of the Sandwich Terns, and we saw them tearing up 

 the down and carrying off the eggs of the unfortunate Eiders when they left 

 their nests to feed. The bird is multiplying enormously there, and unless 

 something is done to check its increase, it will soon drive away all the rarer 

 and more interesting species from the Islands. 



About the end of April the Lesser Black-backed Gulls return to their 

 accustomed haunts, and begin almost immediately to repair their nests, eggs 

 being laid during the first week in May. On bare rocky islands the nests are 

 placed in any convenient niche or crevice, and are large, untidy structures of 

 dead grass and sea-campion, or even bits of turf. On the Fame Islands, 

 where the Lesser Black-backed Gull reigns supreme, the nests are placed 

 among the masses of sea-campion in slight hollows in the ground, and are 

 entirely composed of pieces of that plant gathered green, sometimes being 

 only crushed down plants, the eggs laid on the top. In these parts of the 

 Islands, when the young are hatched, it is very difficult to avoid crushing 

 some of them, as every tuft of campion has one or two crouching in it, trying 

 to hide themselves. Some of these colonies of Lesser Black-backed Gulls 

 increase very rapidly. I remember a pair of these birds taking up their 

 quarters on Flanders Moss in the valley of the Forth in the spring of 1880 ; 

 in 1885 we found twenty-one pairs breeding there, in 1891 seventy-six nests 

 were found, and on my revisiting the colony in 1893 I found a hundred and 

 thirty-four nests of this species containing three eggs each ; this increase went 

 on in spite of the war waged against them by the keepers, who took the 

 eggs and trapped or shot as many old birds as possible. The destruction of 

 fish in the neighbourhood must have been very great, as besides these birds 

 there was a colony of Black-headed Gulls some eight hundred pairs not 

 half a mile distant, and almost every nest had the remains of one or two 

 small trout or parr beside it. The Lesser Black-backed Gull is a very 

 quarrelsome bird, both at its feeding-grounds and near its nest, and frequently 

 fights with its neighbours. On the Culbin Sands I once took hold of a pair, 

 at one of the colonies, with their bills firmly locked in each other's grasp, 

 flapping furiously with their wings and uttering muffled cries of rage. 



The eggs of this species are three in number, and vary much in size, 

 shape, and colour. The ground colour varies from a dirty white to pale 

 bluish-green, and from pale buffish-brown to dark brown. They are blotched 

 and spotted, more rarely streaked, with rich dark brown, very nearly black in 

 some specimens, and have brownish-grey or purple-grey undermarks. Some 



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