364 The Zoologist — September, 1866. 



and occasionally the herring gull — fearless, silent, taking no heed of 

 the clamorous rooks, but all unitedly doing man a service, and preying 

 on the scourges of his crops. More than one has felt a love for 

 Nature, as they saw these beautiful birds, made more beautiful by the 

 contrast with the dark brown earth; and many a farmer's boy has 

 wondered what like the sea could be. Many of this species per- 

 manently frequent our large lakes, and you will rarely pass Conn or 

 Corrib without seeing gulls. These birds must exclusively live on 

 fresh-water fish and insects, and those grubs, &c., derived from the 

 neighbouring fields. Suppose yourself in the far West of Ireland, 

 black peat bog on every side, what land is cultivated is blacker still 

 than the bog or its pools of dark water, black stacks of peat and a 

 blacker sky. This dreary aspect occasionally relieved by some nuid 

 hovel, with tottering walls and withered thatch kept on by heavy 

 stones, its thin column of blue smoke ascending and impregnating 

 the air with the monotonous aroma of burning peat; or perchance 

 some wiry sheep are striving to graze on a tawny slope, for though 

 it is May there is no growth yet; one stunted tree by the cabin 

 possessed by two magpies and iheir nest (for what Connaught cabin 

 is without its magpie's nest !) There is nothing green, nothing bright 

 but the magpies. Stop ! there is, though, something to vie with the 

 burnished magpie. Can you not see his dark brown head from this — 

 his blue back and the snowy margin to his wing? Is he not more 

 beautiful than wlien you saw him last in Dublin Bay, as he gladdens 

 that bleak prospect and your heart, sea naturalist } Why does he 

 seek a land like this, in preference to the sparkling waters of the sea? 

 Because this is "home," and let it "be ever so humble, there's no 

 place like home." There is the low flat lake, where a colony of these 

 birds breed; that little undulating swell of land had hid it from our 

 sight, and from its shores — grovvn with reeds and bulrushes, all 

 withered now, their lanky stems reflected in the dull dark water — rise 

 a company of these birds. I wonder could there be a wilder scene ! 

 Heigh ho ! 



Food. — The blackheaded gull (as are most of the gulls) is omnivorous. 

 I have taken fish, grain, bread, candle-grease, pieces of oily cotton 

 thrown from steamers, meat, vegetables, insects (particularly moths, 

 dragonflies and water Coleoptera), worms, crustaceans, mollusks, 

 Radiata, &c., from their throats. Of their feeding on and taking the 

 ghost moth at night on the wing, as stated by Thompson, I have had 

 ocular proof, and in addition to his statements 1 may remark that the 



