COMMON GULL. 615 



rhymes and poetical allusions. As a rule it does not go far 

 from land, but gets its living by picking up small sand-eels, 

 young herrings, stranded fish, mollusks, crustaceans; and, 

 as before observed, grubs, in pursuit of which flocks of this 

 Gull may often be observed feeding with Rooks on the 

 furrows. Under these circumstances, it will, like other 

 species, pick up grain to a limited extent ; and in a Gull 

 kept by John Hunter, and brought by degrees to feed 

 entirely on corn, the stomach, which is now preserved in the 

 Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, was found to 

 have the muscular parietes considerably thickened. 



The Common Gull makes rather a large nest, whether on 

 marsh or rock, of sea-weeds, heather, grass, and sea-pink, 

 somewhat neater, according to Saxby, than the nest of 

 the Lesser Black-backed Gull which frequents similar 

 localities. He adds that a favourite site is a grassy slope 

 facing the sea, not very far above high-water mark. The 

 eggs are normally three in number, and their usual colour 

 is a dark olive-brown spotted and streaked with darker 

 brown and black, but varieties with ground-colours of pale 

 blue, pale straw-colour, and light green are not uncommon. 

 The average measurements are 2*25 by 1-5 in. The young 

 are hatched in June, and, like other nestling Gulls, are able 

 to run and conceal themselves as soon as hatched. A female 

 in the possession of Dr. Thackeray, the Provost of King's 

 College, Cambridge, had for several seasons following laid 

 one or more eggs ; two Duck's eggs were placed in her nest 

 in the summer of 1844, upon which she sat steadily, and 

 both were productive. One of the young Ducks died at the 

 hatching- time, the other she reared and attended constantly. 



The Common Gull appears to be only a spring visitant to 

 the Faeroes, and Major H. W. Feilden did not observe it 

 during his tour in those islands ; nor is it more than a 

 straggler to Iceland. It is exceedingly abundant in Norway 

 up to the North Cape, breeding both on the coast and on the 

 fjeld lakes ; also in Sweden, Finland, the islands and coasts 

 of the Baltic, and Northern and Central Russia. On migra- 

 tion, and in winter, it occurs on the coasts and inland waters 



