water ; during the day, however, they were always in hundreds at their nesting- 

 place preparing their nests. About the end of April they begin to lay, and 

 at that time a colony of Black-headed Gulls is a very animated sight. 



Not long ago I visited a very picturesque colony of these birds on a 

 small loch in South Perthshire. On our approach the whole colony rose in 

 the air amid dead silence, broken only by the rush of thousands of wings ; 

 once fairly in the air, however, a perfect Babel ensued, the cries being almost 

 deafening at times. They wheeled in companies and battalions, crossing and 

 recrossing each other till they exactly resembled a whirling snowstorm, while 

 every now and then some bold individual would swoop down within a few 

 inches of our heads, rising again with loud cries of remonstrance at our 

 intrusion. As the alarm subsided a large crowd of birds would alight on 

 the water close to us, every one with its head to the wind, and would rise 

 after a minute or so in a body to wheel round and round us with renewed 

 cries. The birds soon quieted down and returned to their nests, and very 

 conspicuous they looked against the dark green of the rushes and sedges. 

 The nests were placed among the reeds, sedges, and coarse grass growing 

 on some acres of swampy ground round the edge of the loch, and on a 

 treacherous floating island, where the ground caved down beneath the weight 

 of a person walking on it ; they were built of reeds, grass, and horse-tail, and 

 were usually flat, untidy structures, often with some large untidy weed, pulled 

 up with the earth still adhering to the roots, and wound round the outside 

 of the nest. All the time we were at the nests the slightest alarm raised 

 hundreds of birds, and we could make the entire colony take to their wings 

 by simply waving our arms. On the slopes of short dry grass round the 

 edges of the loch were many ' preening -places,' such as are found at all 

 colonies of Black-head and other Gulls, the whole grass being trampled flat 

 and whitewashed by the droppings of the birds, while thousands of feathers 

 of all sizes lay around. We noticed a great many dead Gulls lying about, 

 both on the edges of the loch and near the nests, and actually saw one fall 

 from a good height, quite dead. On dissection the bird proved to be very 

 anaemic, and its stomach was perfectly empty, though its body was in good 

 condition, and apparently well nourished. I have seen this happen at two or 

 three colonies of this species, and have never had it satisfactorily explained. 



The call -note of the Black-headed Gull may be represented by the 

 syllables ' Kree-dh-kree-dh^ but when they are disturbed at their nests one 

 may hear all sorts of cries, such as ' Krii-krfi-krit ', or ' Kik-kikj sometimes 

 ' Kr-kr-kr? or ' Kdrr-kdrr' and ' Kree-kree! 



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