Photograph by C. Reid, Wishaw, 
A FLIGHT OF GULLS. 
BRITISH GULLS. 
AuByN TREVoR-BAttyE, M.A., F.L.8., ETc. 
N° eroup of birds taken as a whole is more easily recognisable, both by structure 
and habits, than the family of Gulls (Lamde). his family has been divided 
by ornithologists into three sub-families—the Terns or Sea-swallows (Sternine), the Gulls 
(Larine), and the Skuas or Robber gulls (Stercorariine). Of these, the terns and skuas— 
since they would in justice require a separate article—are here omitted altogether; and we 
will consider only the gulls (Lavine). We need not here concern ourselves to take the 
eulls in the order of their genera; imdeed, perhaps a clearer way (n a popular article) 
will be to group them quite unscientifically, according to their distribution at’ nesting 
time—as arctic and non-arctic gulls. 
We may begin with the most beautiful of all the gulls and the most northerly, 
Ross's or the Wedge-tailed eull (Rodostethia rosea). This is a true arctic gull, so 
much so that up to the present moment, so far as we know, its eggs have never been 
taken by man. Hvyen Dr. Nansen, though evidently clase to its breeding place, never 
got its eggs. It is an exceedingly rare wanderer to these latitudes, and then only in 
winter, when its plumage is comparatively tame. In its summer dress it has a_ black 
collar, and its breast is tinted with rose. Sir James Clark Ross, the great explorer, 
discovered it first away up in Smith’s Sound, in 1823, when he was serving on one of 
Parry's arctic expeditions. 
In the Ivory gull (Pagophila eburnea) we have another truly arctic gull, and one 
which has visited us far more frequently than the first. The plumage of an adult ivory 
eull in summer is entirely white, while its legs and feet are jet black. I have seen 
a good deal of these birds in the arctic regions and consider it one of the most strikingly 
beautiful of birds on the wing. Its flight is tern-like rather than gull-like, and it has 
the tern’s pretty habit of hovering for some moments together over a given spot, with 
its eye on the fish below. Brilliantly white in the sunlight, the ivory gulls seem like 
an emanation from the icebergs about which they go. lovely as they are to look at, 
they are, however, no more fastidious in thei feeling than them more sombre allies; and 
161 
