606 BIRDS OF SOMERSETSHIRE. 



brown, especially on the inner webs; the tips are 

 brown, edged with white: in this specimen nearly the 

 whole of the old feathers are excessively ragged and 

 worn ; the tips of some are quite worn off, the shafts 

 being left projecting. The adult bird has the bill 

 yellow ; the angle on the lower mandible red ; irides 

 straw-yellow ; the whole of the head, neck all round, 

 breast, belly, flanks, tail and tail-coverts, pure white ; 

 the back, scapulars, wing-coverts and tertials dark 

 slate -colour, approaching to black ; the longer scapu- 

 lars and the tertials are tipped with white; the 

 primaries are black, tipped with white ; legs and feet 

 yellow. 



The eggs vary in colour, some being of a dark 

 olive-brown, and others pale drab : they are spotted 

 with ash-grey and two shades of brown. 



HERRING GULL, Larus argentatus. This Gull 

 seems to me by far the most common of all the 

 Gulls, both on our channel, the Bristol, and on the 

 English, outnumbering either the Common Gull or 

 the Kittiwake. It breeds in great numbers at Lundy 

 Island and many other places on both sides of the 

 Bristol Channel, generally amongst the grandest and 

 most lofty cliffs, where the birds enliven the scene 

 by their wild cry and yet wilder laugh, which, by the 

 bye, always reminds me of the Zoological Gardens, 

 even though anchored in Lundy Roads or scrambling 

 over the wild cliffs of Alderney or Sark. 



I am sorry to say at many of the breeding stations 



