Bird-Life in Labrador. 83 



claws horn color to dusky. Shafts of quills of a most beauti- 

 ful straw color. The bird showed unusual signs of tameness 

 for one so naturally wild ; it was probably reduced from hun- 

 ger. Its graceful sailing with an occasional downward swoop 

 were most beautiful displays of its immense wing power. 

 The length of the one we captured was twenty-nine inches, 

 its extent nearly sixty-four inches, the wing itself from its 

 flexure being nearly twenty inches. 



GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL 



Larus marinus. (L.) 



THIS is the "great bald eagle " of Labrador and the gull 

 tribe, and a veritable rascal he is. The largest of the gulls 

 and but little inferior in dimensions to the eagle itself, he 

 sails high in the air and tyrannizes over all that are beneath 

 him. So high does he sail that even extra large wired cart- 

 ridges fail to reach him ; or, if they reach, he laughs \vith a 

 shrill laughter at the leaden rain that patters, harmlessly, 

 against or through his plumage. A swoop, and he has sailed 

 unhurt away from the very muzzle of your gun before you 

 have had even a chance to cover him; as knowing as a crow, 

 he is often within shot yet you can rarely ever shoot him. 

 Labrador is the home of this snowy, black-backed king of 

 birds. Here he breeds in all the harmless security of low 

 islands, in nests scraped together from the topmost knoll of his 

 island home, and often a few feet only from the very water's 

 edge. The nest and eggs are very difficult to distinguish from 

 those of the herring gull, which also breeds in abundance 

 with this species, the two nests being often almost side by side. 

 The eggs are usually given by authorities as being only three, 

 but I am positive that I have found four a number of times. 

 They resemble those of the herring gull both in size and 

 shape. While we are examining the nest and eggs in their ex- 

 posed situation, often upon the almost bare rock ; the owner is 

 soaring in majestic beauty way, way up in the heavens far above 



