362 The Zoologist — September, 1806. 



wholly absent from the period of their retirement, late in the spring, 

 until old and young returned in company. I was therefore surprised 

 to see a flock of forty-nine fly high above the Lagan Bridge early in 

 the evening of the loth of May, 1850, all adult birds, and followed by 

 two or three smaller flocks proceeding seaward, in the same course, 

 most probabl}^ to their breeding-haunt. Many adults, I was told, were 

 daily observed in the Bay from this time forward. On the 4th of June 

 I remarked a number of old birds in a similar place in Lancashire — 

 the marine strands about Fleetwood ; and on the 2nd of July about 

 forty in that state of plumage appeared in a flock, at a locality of the 

 same nature, between Drogheda and Dublin. Their wandering far 

 from breeding-haunts, in the midst of the season, would therefore seem 

 to be not unusual, unless that such birds — like adult kiltiwakes, here- 

 after to be mentioned — do not increase their species." Yarrell sup- 

 posed that the bird of a year old, figured in his plate, was breeding, 

 because shot at the breeding-grounds, yet a moment's dissection 

 would have proved the contrary. Montagu believes it mature at a 

 year old, and tells us that it loses the bar on the wing and on the tail 

 in its first spring, which it never does till the summer or early autumn 

 moult: he gives no dates, and his plumages are incorrect. Macgilli- 

 vray is quite accurate in his plumages, but traces them no fui'ther than 

 the second autumn. The blackheaded gull is a most graceful bird on 

 the wing, the pale blue back and snowy breast looking intensely 

 sparkling if viewed against a lowering sky, and many a dim picture of 

 wintry storm has the buoyant tern-like flight of this gull gladdened, as 

 I sat on some lonely coast cowering from the searching sleet among 

 some of Nature's ruggedest clifls, with the mighty Atlantic thundering 

 at my feet, where the only sound of living life was the wild hoarse 

 laugh of the wagel (young herring gull), as he soared by, seemingly 

 wondering how a man could love the solitude that to him was home. 

 Unlike the true gulls the brownhood seems to revel in the storm, and 

 never is its flight more varied than at these times : flapping gently 

 along at one moment, the next with snowy under parts thrown up to 

 the storm, it will permit itself to be carried fifty yards or more, side- 

 ways, from its direct flight, and will again assume the old position, 

 flapping gently not a foot above the boiling sea ; hid at one time 

 between two waves, to be seen the next to alight upon the summit of 

 a billow, pick up some scrap, and be left still flying as the wave tosses 

 its white crest from under its still white breast. It seems as happy 

 and as much at home as if the day had August for its mother, and a 



