614 BIKDS OF SOMERSETSHIRE. 



The eggs vary in colour, but the more general 

 appears to be a yellowish brown, tinged with green 

 and sparingly spotted with slate -grey and dark 

 brown. 



GLAUCOUS GULL, Larus glaucus. The Glaucous 

 Gull, which fully equals in size the last-mentioned 

 species, is a northern bird, seldom visiting the more 

 southern counties of England : it has, however, been 

 taken in most of the counties, including the neigh- 

 bouring count}'- of Devon : in this county I have 

 been informed by the Rev. Murray A. Mathew that 

 it has been taken at Weston-super-Mare, and Yar- 

 rell's drawing is from one that was taken on the 

 Severn near Bristol. 



The Glaucous Gull is not very particular about 

 its diet, eating nearly any sort of animal food or 

 carrion : it kills and eats small birds, as their bones 

 have been found in its stomach, and one when shot 

 disgorged a Little Auk, and a second was found in 

 its stomach.* It feeds also on whales' flesh and any 

 fish or shell-fish it can get, and it robs the nests of 

 other sea-birds, and eats either eggs or young: it 

 seems also occasionally to try a vegetable diet, as its 

 stomach has been found filled with sea- weed, t 



Yarrell quotes two accounts of the nesting pro- 

 pensities of this bird, one of which says that the 



* Yarrell, vol. iii., p. 619. 



f ' Zoologist ' for 1865, p. 9521. 



