LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL. 625 



generally chooses the grassy slopes above the more precipitous 

 cliffs to which the Herring Gull resorts. Comparatively flat- 

 topped islands are especially to its taste, as well as isolated 

 stacks of rocks ; and it is very partial to islands in lochs. 

 In England, where suitable situations are somewhat rare, 

 its breeding-places are few and far between ; none being 

 positively known on the east coast to the south of the Fame 

 Islands ; nor in the south until we come to Devon and Corn- 

 wall. At Lundy Island, which belongs to the former county, 

 a good many make their nests among the coarse herbage of 

 the upper slopes. On the coast of Wales there are several 

 colonies ; it breeds on the Isle of Man ; there is, or was, a 

 colony on an island in Ulleswater ; and in Cumberland it is 

 so numerous on Bowness Moss, Solway Flow, and Wedholme 

 Flow, that the eggs are largely destroyed by the keepers to 

 prevent the undue increase of this rapacious bird. It is also 

 banished, so far as possible, from the moors of Northumber- 

 land, but on the Fame Islands it nests by hundreds, its 

 congener the Herring Gull being very rare there. 



In Scotland the Lesser Black-backed Gull is very abun- 

 dant, and, with the exception of a considerable portion of the 

 east coast which is unsuited to its habits, colonies may be 

 found scattered far too numerously for game preservers 

 over the moorlands, lochs, and islands from the Shetlands to 

 the Solway. Over this area it is a commoner species than the 

 Herring Gull, but in Ireland the proportions are reversed, 

 and but few breeding-places of the Lesser Black-backed Gull 

 are known, although both young and old are resident through- 

 out the year. 



Speaking of Lesser Black-backed Gulls on the Fames, 

 Mr. Hewitson observes, that the birds " appear to prefer those 

 islands which are the most rocky, and upon which there is 

 the least herbage, and though they have their choice, very 

 few of them deposit their eggs upon the grass, and yet they 

 rarely lay them without making a tolerably thick nest for 

 their reception ; it is of grass, loosely bundled together in 

 large pieces, and placed in some slight depression or hollow 

 of the rock. Amongst upwards of one hundred nests that I 



VOL. III. 4 L 



