16 BRITISH SEA BIRDS. 



little, however, what the season may be, for many 

 interesting birds are sure to be met with by the 

 sea ; the wide waters and wet tide-swept shores are 

 a perennial feeding place, and a safe and congenial 

 refuge. 



Of all the birds that haunt the sea and the shore, 

 those of the Gull family are the best known. 

 From whichever direction the sea is reached, 

 almost invariably the first indication of its vicinity 

 is a Gull, sailing along, it may be, in easy, careless 

 flight, or wheeling and gliding high in air above 

 the waste of restless waters. The Gull and its 

 kindred then are inseparably associated in the 

 minds of most people with the sea, and with them, 

 therefore, it certainly seems most appropriate to 

 commence our study of marine bird-life. 



The Gull family is divided by many systematists 

 into three fairly well-defined groups or sub-families, 

 viz., the typical Gulls or Larinae, the Skuas or 

 Stercorariinse, and the Terns or Sterninse. The 

 Skuas, however, are included with the typical Gulls 

 by many naturalists, a proceeding for which much 

 may be said, thus reducing the three sub-families 

 to two. In their distribution the Gulls and Terns 

 may almost be regarded as cosmopolitan, but the 

 Skuas are chiefly boreal in their dispersal, four 

 of the half dozen known species breeding in the 

 Arctic Regions, and two others dwelling in the 

 higher latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. Some 

 of the species are very widely distributed ; the 



