BLACK-HEADED GULL 417 



Geographical distribution. Abroad, the Black-headed 

 Gull breeds over the greater part of the European Con- 

 tinent, from about lat. 65 N. in Norway and Sweden, 

 and from Archangel in Kussia southward to the Mediterra- 

 nean. Eastward it can be traced over Temperate Asia, as 

 a nesting-species to Kamtschatka. On its autumn and 

 winter migration it reaches North Africa, Tropical Asia 

 (including India and China), the Philippines and Japan. 



DESCRIPTIVE CHARACTERS. 



PLUMAGE. 1 Adult male nuptial. Head and upper neck, 

 dark brown (not black as the bird's name implies) ; back 

 and wings, ' french ' grey ; outer primaries, chiefly white, 

 with black tips and blackish bands along the inner webs ; 

 inner primaries, chiefly ' french ' grey tipped with black ; 

 secondaries, pale ' pearl ' grey ; rest of plumage including 

 tail, white, the breast being suffused with a very delicate 

 evanescent pink. 



Adult female nuptial. Similar in plumage to the male. 



Adult winter, male and female. The dark coloration 

 of the head (hood) is replaced by white in the early autumn, 

 but the head never gets completely white, a few black 

 patches remaining about the regions of the eye and the ear. 



Immature, male and female. The wings and back are 

 splashed with warm chestnut-brown, which extends for 

 some distance up the back of the neck 2 ; much of this 

 colour disappears during the first autumn, but the wing- 

 coverts remain dappled, and the tail banded with brown 



1 I have obtained specimens which were only beginning to lose their 

 ' hoods ' in the middle of November, and others which had assumed their 

 new nuptial hood -feathers in December and January. I have notes of 

 sickly birds and those subjected to captivity which moulted from summer 

 to winter-plumage rather slowly. On December 16th I picked up a 

 freshly-killed specimen on the Dublin coast in a very emaciated condition ; 

 it was just beginning to shed its dark hood-feathers. But early Feb- 

 ruary is the 'usual time at which the ' hood ' is assumed, and this plu- 

 mage is retained until about the middle of July. By August most of 

 the birds have changed into winter-garb. Immature birds do not 

 assume the ' hood ' in their first spring until March or April, and in some 

 cases not until the following spring. 



2 Some young birds lose the chestnut-brown on the back and neck 

 much earlier than others. On July 27th, 1900, I examined a specimen 

 which had lost much of this coloration, whereas on October 23rd,. I 

 obtained a bird still retaining all the immature markings. 



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