416 LABHX3E- 



clothed in a richly variegated yellowish-brown down (Plate 

 XLIIL, figs. 1 and 2). 



Many galleries are protected, and the eggs are collected 

 for culinary purposes, the birds continuing to lay after their 

 clutches have been repeatedly removed. 



Black-headed Gulls, like other creatures living together 

 in large and densely-thronged communities, 1 often enter into 

 combat, severely pecking and even killing one another to 

 secure the most favourable nesting-sites. The young are 

 often knocked out of their nests, and many of them, when 

 creeping about in search of hiding-places, are destroyed by 

 rats and other enemies. 



Books, Daws, Black-backed Gulls, and Hawks, are 

 vigorously assailed and even killed by the members of a 

 gullery, and I have several times found dead Jackdaws and 

 Books, especially when the gulleries were in well-wooded 

 districts. In such places the Gulls may be seen alighting on 

 the branches of trees. 



There are many gulleries in the eastern and southern 

 maritime counties of England, the most westerly of which 

 is in Poole in Dorset. Some of the inland counties, certain 

 districts in Wales, and Walney Island off Lancashire, also 

 harbour colonies. 



Great assemblages exist in Scotland, notably at Wig- 

 town, Lanark, Loch Lomond, Moray Firth, and northward 

 to the Shetlands. 



This Gull is an abundant breeding- species in Ireland, 

 and maritime and inland counties are both visited ; in fact, 

 the great central plain accommodates vast numbers. 



Among marine stations may be mentioned the Blasket 

 Islands, the most westerly land in Europe, or, as the 

 Islanders put it to me, when I visited them, " The nearest 

 land to America ! " 



Many former gulleries have now ceased to exist in the 

 British Isles, while others have newly sprung up. For as 

 man from time to time appropriated their breeding-grounds 

 for building or cultivating purposes, the birds en masse 

 simply changed their quarters, and so their numbers are not 

 decreasing. 



1 In densely-populated gulleries it is most difficult to avoid treading 

 on the eggs and fledglings, and in taking photographs one has to be care- 

 ful first to inspect the surroundings, lest the diverging legs of the camera 

 be thrust into and damage the contents of adjoining nests, while the 

 operator manipulates his instrument under cover of his focussing cloth. 



