ALONG ROCK-BOUND COASTS. 221 



stances as a proof of which it is the most widely 

 distributed of all the Gulls during the breeding 

 season. The nests are precisely similar to those 

 of the preceding species sometimes slight, some- 

 times more elaborate, according to circumstances. 

 The eggs are two or three in number, varying 

 from pale bluish green to olive and yellowish 

 brown, spotted with dark and light brown and 

 gray. All these large Gulls become very 

 clamorous when their breeding -haunts are in- 

 vaded, the present species especially so. All 

 the time you are at the nests the parents, in a 

 dense, drifting, fluttering throng, persistently 

 keep up a chorus of chattering notes, sounding 

 like ki-uk ki-uk or hak-hak-hak. The Herring 

 Gull is readily distinguished from all its larger 

 congeners by the pale gray of its mantle. 



Our last species of this group is the COMMON 



/-* f -r \ r 1 1 r i Scotland 



GULL (L. canus), one of the most local of the and Ireland, 

 Gulls during the breeding season, and only met England? 

 with then in northern and western districts. Its 

 much smaller size serves to distinguish it from 

 the Herring Gull, although the colour of its 

 plumage is much the same. These birds begin 

 to collect at their breeding-stations towards the 

 end of April, but the nests do not contain eggs 

 before the middle or even the end of May. 

 Colonies of this Gull may occasionally be met 

 with on islands in lakes some distance from the 

 sea, as well as on the rock-stacks near the coast 

 of the mainland ; but so far as my own observa- 

 tions go, rocky islands in the quiet Highland sea- 

 lochs are the favourite place of assembly during 

 summer. Here almost every little island rock 

 contains a pair or so, and on the biggest islands, 



