The Zoologist— Dkcember, 1866. 519 



mackerel (these "plays" are caused by the mackerel driving the fry to 

 the surface, when they follow and " rise" after them), or in a tideway 

 where the fry are compelled to swim high, the din created by their 

 cries whilst fishing is nearly deafening, and can be heard two or three 

 miles off on a calm foggy morning. The skuas at these times are great 

 interlopers ; singling out a well-filled bird, they will separate him from 

 the flock, and chase and bully him till he gives up what he has eaten. 

 Perhaps none of the gulls have such a knack of gorging themselves as 

 the kittiwake; it is consequently frequently found in flocks, lying 

 lazily on the surface of the water, or if a barren rock is near the 

 fishing-ground it is sure to be carpeted with this species at various 

 times of the day — those times of the tide when the fry swim deepest. 

 A very pretty sight it is to see a gray granite rock thickly studded with 

 the little blue and white " mackerel-gull," and as the boat " closes" 

 the rock, to see the living mass rise into the air, showing no fear of the 

 boat, or perchance the deadly gunner, but passing and repassing at 

 oar's length, with its strange jerking tern-like flight, above one's head, 

 on this side and on that, looking down pryingly at you with its large, 

 lustrous and soft dark eye, as it turns its head from side to side, and 

 occasionally uttering its soft and plaintive " key— we— ah." Though 

 the kittiwake is perhaps the least beautiful of this beautiful family, the 

 tern -like beak and the short tarsi— the former taking from the head 

 that beautifully innocent look of the other gulls— being to my eyes its 

 ugliest points, it is notwithstanding one of the lovely though common 

 little gems of the sea ornithologist ; in fact, the summer sea would not 

 be a summer sea without the kittiwake. In the stormiest weather, 

 particularly during easterly gales in the winter, the kittiwake is one of 

 the storm gulls, revelling, as it were, like the blackheaded gull, among 

 the waves' whitest crests, and never coming towards the shore, as the 

 large gulls do. During the breeding season the birds of last year and 

 the two-year old birds associate in flocks, fishing and resting in the 

 neighbourhood of the breeding birds, but never approaching the ledges 

 on which the adults are breeding. Many observers have considered 

 these two-year old birds to be barren adults, and a casual observer 

 might fall into the error, but how an ornithologist could overlook the 

 black bastard wing and the blackish or dark olive feet I cannot tell. 

 The reason these immature birds frequent the situations of the adults 

 at this season is, like everything in Nature, simple and for a purpose : 

 the breeding-stations of the kittiwake are scrupulously chosen and 

 selected for being in the immediate vicinity of the road— if I may use 



