PLATE 1 

 BLACK-HEADED GULL. Larus ridibundus 



May loM, 1893. Went across to the colony of Black-headed Gulls on Flanders 

 Moss, near the Lake of Monteith. When we were more than half a mile from 

 the colony we could see the ground white with the sitting birds, and a con- 

 tinual stream of birds passed us on their way to their feeding-grounds, others 

 returning with small trout to feed their mates on the nests. When we got 

 within a few hundred yards the entire colony rose amid dead silence ; once on 

 the wing the cries were deafening, and many of the birds swooped angrily at 

 us as we walked among the nests. We saw a great many fish lying about 

 both in and round the nests, many of them headless. 



We saw hundreds of nests, most of them containing three eggs, but some 

 only two. The birds generally begin to lay here about the beginning of the 

 last week in April, and fresh eggs are not easily obtained after the first week 

 in May. Most of the nests were in very swampy places, on little tufts of 

 heather or grass, among pools of water full of rank moss growing up to 

 the surface ; such nests were usually flat flimsy structures of reeds and grass. 

 Those which were built on dry places among the long heather were much 

 more carefully built ; they were always on the top of the heather, never on the 

 ground among it, and were, as a rule, rather bulky structures of heather and 

 rank grass, lined with fine grass. 



I photographed one of the most typical nests I could select, and the annexed 

 Plate is taken from it. It contained one of the curiously shaded eggs with 

 a thin shell, and two others quite unlike it. While we were at the nests the 

 whole colony flew above us at a good height in the air; the chorus of cries 

 was kept up all the time, each bird calling incessantly ' Klk-klk-klk-krrr-krrrk; 

 the owners of the nests we were investigating often swooping down on us 

 with cries of rage, in which case the cry was a long-drawn ' Krrrrrr ' uttered 

 as they rose again. 



