86 Bird-Lift in Labrador. 



the nest is situated. The eggs are usually three, though I am 

 confident that I found four on more occasions than one. 

 These gulls appear to have no special time for depositing their 

 eggs, excepting, of course, keeping within the usual limits of 

 the breeding season to this locality. We found fresh eggs 

 and young birds in nests closely situated to each other. 

 Young birds appeared early in the season and fresh eggs late 

 in the season. I do not remember to have found, as I have 

 among the bank swallows, instances of perfectly fresh eggs 

 and young birds in the same nests, but the case was almost as 

 bad from a scientific standpoint at least. With the young birds 

 of all the larger species of gulls, the sailors make great pets. 

 They rear them and the birds become quite tame and know 

 their owners, at least sufficiently to come when they are called 

 to be fed, and to be wary when called at any other time or by 

 any other person. The young birds grow well in confine- 

 ment, and feed greedily upon small fish and scraps of refuse 

 fish and other articles of food. At nearly all times of the 

 day and in all weathers these birds, with others of the same 

 family, hover about the waters in large numbers looking for 

 food or sail placidly about the w r aters of the bays or open sea, 

 near the islands, sometimes in fiocks of many hundreds. 

 They are either very tame or very wild. I have noticed that 

 the wildest of them will be enticed within gunshot by the 

 prospect of food or pieces of garbage thrown overboard for 

 this purpose from the vessel's galley. Hundreds of them hung 

 about our vessel's stern, especially at dusk, both while anch- 

 ored in some pleasant and quiet harbor and while on excur- 

 sions up or down the coast. When fishing they pounce di- 

 rectly upon their prey, which they grasp with both feet. I 

 have repeatedly seen specimens of either this or the great 

 black-backed gull, perhaps both, pounce upon and grapple a 

 fish too large for them to secure, and have watched the fight 

 with great interest. Usually the gull succeeds in securing its 

 victim. I am told that occasionally they fasten upon a large 

 salmon from which they cannot break loose, and that both 



