42 LLOYD'S NATURAL HISTORY. 



pure white ; the slaty-grey head being separated from the white 

 neck and chest by a band of black ; bill black to the angle, 

 chrome-yellow anteriorly ; inside of mouth vermilion ; iris dark 

 brown, a narrow vermilion ring round the eye, beneath which 

 is a white speck; tarsi and toes brown to blackish. Total 

 length, 13-3, culmen, 1-15; wing, 11*4; tail, 4*0; tarsus, r6. 



Adult Female. Similar to the male. Total length, 12*5 inches ; 

 wing, iro. 



Adult in Winter Plumage. According to Mr. Saunders, the 

 winter plumage is similar to the breeding dress, excepting as 

 regards the head, which is white, with grey streaks, which 

 coalesce on the nape and hind-neck, producing a greyish-black 

 appearance. The quills become worn and faded in colour, 

 and their tips abruptly broken off, as if cut artificially ; the bill 

 is duller in colour and the tips brown. By the beginning of 

 April the new primaries, with broad white tips, are fully de- 

 veloped, and the head is plentifully besprinkled with slaty-grey. 



Young. Ashy-brown above, mottled all over with ashy-buff 

 edges to the feathers, emphasized by a sub-terminal bar of 

 black ; the head rather lighter ashy, with obscure fulvescent 

 margins ; lores and base of forehead, as well as a streak behind 

 the eye, white, as also the fore part of the cheeks; the feathers 

 below the eye and the ear-coverts slaty- grey ; under surface of 

 body white, with a large patch of ashy-brown on each side of 

 the upper breast, the feathers being margined with ashy-buff; 

 tail with a conspicuous black band at the end. 



Range in Great Britain. Young specimens of Sabine's Gull 

 have been frequently obtained off our coast, chiefly in autumn 

 and winter, between the months of August and December. 

 Two adults in summer plumage have been recorded, one from 

 Bridlington, in Yorkshire, and another from the Island of Mull. 



Range outside the British Islands. The present species is 

 circumpolar in distribution, and breeds throughout Arctic 

 America from Baffin Bay to Alaska, whence to the eastward 

 it has been found nesting on the Taimyr peninsula, by Dr. Von 

 Middendorff. In winter it visits the shores of Northern 

 Europe as a straggler, but in the New World it goes as far 

 south as the Bermudas and Southern Texas on the Atlantic 

 side, and on the Pacific side the species has been found by 



