JUNE. BLACK-HEADED GULLS. 235 



rule, always to offer a fish a smaller fly than the 

 one he rises shily at ; and I believe that I should 

 be borne out in this opinion by more experienced 

 anglers than myself. 



I never saw so many black-headed gulls col- 

 lected together as on the Loch of Belivat, on the 

 property of Lethen : at one end of the loch there 

 are a great many rushes and water-plants ; these 

 are, literally speaking, full of nests, formed of in- 

 terwoven rushes, weeds, etc. ; and on the islands in 

 the lake you can scarcely land without putting your 

 foot on eggs, which are very slightly protected by 

 anything in the shape of a nest. On this island 

 are a few stunted and bent willows ; every branch 

 and every fork of a branch where a nest can pos- 

 sibly be placed is occupied: this is the only instance 

 I ever met with of gulls building on bushes. The 

 stench on the island is almost insupportable ; in- 

 deed it was so strong that I hurried off again as 

 quickly as possible : the day was hot, and it actually 

 seemed pestilential. The old birds looked like a 

 shower of drifting snow over our heads, and were as 

 noisy as a dozen village schools broken loose. This 

 was on the 2d of June, and there were numbers of 

 young gulls recently hatched — curiously marked 

 little tortoiseshell- coloured things who tottered 

 about the rushes, etc., without the least fear of us. 



