" The young do not attain full plumage until they are about five years of age." 



THE GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL 



HE Great Black Back or 

 Cob as it is called in some 

 parts of England is the 

 largest Gull found breeding 

 in the British Islands. Its 

 length is about thirty inches 

 and from tip to tip its 

 outstretched wings measure 

 nearly six feet. It may always be 

 distinguished with certainty from its 

 smaller yet more numerous relative, 

 the Lesser Black-Backed Gull, by the 

 fact that it has flesh-coloured legs and 

 feet, whereas those of its congener are 

 yellow. 



The Great Black-Backed Gull, although 

 found scattered all round our coast in 

 winter, breeds much more numerously 

 in Scotland and Ireland than in England 

 or Wales, where only a few pairs are to 

 be met with. 



It lives upon dead fish left stranded 

 by the tide, young birds, eggs, dead 

 lambs, and all kinds of carrion. I 

 have watched it do almost incredible 

 things in the way of swallowing young 



birds, and killing sickly puffins in the 

 sea, and do not wonder that the High- 

 land gamekeeper is its sworn enemy. 

 If the naturalist finds and examines the 

 nest of a wild goose, or other defenceless 

 bird breeding in the heather, he may 

 cover the eggs up ever so carefully, but 

 if he is within sight of a Cob that nest 

 is almost certain to be robbed directly 

 he has turned his back upon it. 



As an illustration of the intelligence 

 and cunning of the Great Black-Backed 

 Gull I will relate an experience which I 

 had some years ago. Two or three pairs 

 were nesting on a small rocky island in 

 a fresh- water loch in the Highlands 

 where our full-page photogravure was 

 obtained. I induced a keeper who 

 accompanied me to the place to help 

 me to build a hide-up of sallow bushes. 

 When this was completed and I had 

 been duly installed with my apparatus, 

 the keeper rowed away and left me. 

 After much waiting I secured a number 

 of pictures, but as the birds were some- 

 what small on my plates, on account 



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