THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 547 



of August 1870 near the dune, by Herr Feodor Schneider, a 

 gentleman from Silesia, who had the great kindness to present it 

 to me. During a violent westerly gale on the 20th October 1879, 

 which had caused enormous crowds of gulls to assemble on the 

 lee side of the* island among others, hundreds of Larus minutus 

 a Siberian Gull was again seen at a short range, flying up and 

 down over the wild surf of the breakers, and descending here and 

 there in search of food ; the bird might easily have been shot, but 

 would have been carried away, for the storm was far too violent 

 and the sea running much too high for a boat to have gone out. 

 To have to look on calmly while an eagerly coveted bird is moving 

 about in one's immediate neighbourhood, without its being in one's 

 power to obtain it, is indeed enduring the tortures of Tantalus ; 

 the most painful experience of this kind, however, which I have 

 ever passed though, is the case of Hirundo rufula already related 

 under its own heading. 



I ought to mention that the living or freshly killed bird, in the 

 relations of its body and wings, is much more closely connected 

 with Larusfuscus than with L. argentatus, for in the Siberian Gull 

 the wings in repose project beyond the tail as much as in L. fuscus, 

 while this is known not to be the case in L. argentatus. 



The Siberian Gull is met with nesting from the estuaries of the 

 Petchora eastwards along the Arctic coasts of Asia, and also in 

 Alaska (Larus cachinnans. Alaska. Signal Service, U.S. Army). 



I have to say in addition that an old bird was shot here on the 

 25th of October 1888, which is preserved in my collection. 



353. Herring Gull [SILBERMOWE]. 

 LAKUS ABGENTATUS, Brtinnich. 1 



Heligolandish : Old birds : S6mmerkubb = Summer Gutt. 

 Young birds : Grii K\ibb = Grey Gull. 



Larus argentatus. Naumann, x. 379. 



Herring Gull. Dresser, viii. 399. 



Mouette a manteau bleu. Temminck, Manuel, ii. 764, iv. 470. 



This is at all times of the year the most numerously represented 

 of the many species of gulls met with on Heligoland, and also is 

 seen soaring about in search of food more frequently than any other 

 species in the immediate vicinity of the island. 



During the fishing seasons in spring and autumn, when the fish 

 offal supplies them with a rich abundance of welcome fare, hundreds 

 and thousands of the birds assemble near the shore ; in the earlier 



1 Larus argentatus, Gmel. 



