500 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



The Black-headed Gulls, which in this district are not so common as the 

 Herring and Common Gulls, I think I have only seen in company with one 

 or other of the latter. Small flocks of the Common Gull, usually composed 

 of half-a-dozen to a dozen birds, are very regular in the cold weather, 

 winging their way to their chosen feeding grounds. They come in during 

 frosty weather when it is also foggy. In such weather I have frequently 

 heard their cries as they pass over Dublin, about sunrise, in the months of 

 December and January. In the country around Lucan, in the Phoenix 

 Park, and near Straffan, I have frequently observed them flying back in 

 the direction of Dublin Bay towards evening. This species, in this district 

 at any rate, prefers ploughed fields rather than grass-lands. Occasionally 

 I have seen large flocks of them near here, generally soon after ploughing 

 has commenced in October. The Herring Gull is the most numerous of 

 the gulls that visit us, as well as the one that comes most frequently, and is 

 consequently the best known by the dwellers in the country. When living 

 at Lucan, a few years ago, I used often on frosty mornings to feel confident 

 that I should see large flocks of these gulls in certain fields which they were 

 partial to, and I was seldom disappointed. They used to make their first 

 appearance for the season — just as they do here now — as soon as ploughing 

 had begun. How they knew when the plough had commenced to turn up 

 worms for them has always been a mystery to me. I never could discover 

 where any solitary individuals or small flocks came first to spy out and 

 report on the matter; but doubtless the same sort of instinct that brings 

 the Kittiwakes back to Lambay Island, with extraordinary regularity, the 

 last week of May, directs with similar exactness the movements of the 

 Herring Gulls. In the hard weather, when ploughing is mostly over, the 

 flocks of Herring Gulls frequent persistently, morning after morning, the 

 same favourite meadows or pastures, and yet do not visit some adjacent 

 fields. At times they wander a good deal throughout the day. In mild 

 weather their appearance inland is uncertain ; sometimes none are to be 

 seen for a number of weeks, and then they unaccountably reappear. As an 

 instance of this, I may mention that a note in my diary, dated February 

 24th, 1878, records the appearance of a large flock of Herring Gulls on that 

 morning at Esker, Dear Lucan, after they had been absent for several 

 weeks. The morning was fine and bright, after a rainy night. A return 

 of frost in the early part of the year almost invariably brings them up 

 country again. I have rarely seen them returning to the coast in the 

 evening, and have never yet observed them flying inland in the morning, 

 but I have once or twice remarked them to be in the fields as soon as it was 

 light enough to see them. Whether they remain during the night I am 

 not able to say, but I am inclined to think not. The other gull coming 

 inland here, the Lesser Black-backed Gull, is curiously different in some 

 of its habits from the last-named species, to which it is pretty closely allied. 



