162 Animal! Life 
the odorous remains of a dead whale is among the least offensive things on which they 
feed. This bird ranges right round the pole. 
A third arctic gullis the Iceland gull (Larus lewcopterus), which may be fairly described 
as a small edition of the bird which follows. As I am not myself familiar with the bird, 
excepting in collections, 1 will here only say that Mr. Howard Saunders teils us that 
its summer home is Greenland and the arctic regions of America, but not in Iceland; 
that in winter time it is to be found about Norway and in the North Sea, where, no 
doubt, I have overlooked it. Only by long practice of observation can one learn to 
determine with certainty the species of some particular birds when on the wing. 
It is possible to determine by their voices and their flight the species of several of 
the flocked finches when flying; no one who made any pretence to being an observer 
could mustake a distant flight (or “stand”) of peewits for a flight of vooks, a 
ring-dove for a stock-dove, or either for a blue-rock pigeon. Again, when once the 
difference has been understood, it is as easy to tell a crow from a rook as a rook from 
a jackdaw. And so with the sea-gulls. The Brown-headed Gull and the Kittiwake, the 
Lesser Black-backed and the Herring Gull, the Great Black-backed, the Common, the 
Glaucous Gull—all these are easily separable one from the other even at some little 
distance. It is possible also to make 
a pretty shrewd guess at some of 
them even in their immature plumage. 
But the Iceland gull—a pale version 
of the herrmg gull—must easily be 
mistaken for that bird unless there 
be some difference in manner of 
flight; and this I do not know. 
The fourth and last arctic gull is 
the Glaucous Gull (Larus glaucus), the 
“burgomaster”’ of whaling men and 
the big bully of the arctic generally. 
Over thirty inches in length, some 
three feet six inches from poimt to 
point of wings, pure white except for 
1) e x oO 
Photograph by] GANNETS. [C. Reid, Wishaw. its pale lavender mantle, pink legged, 
orange and yellow billed, the adult 
male is a very brave figure of a bird. Bold and rapacious, devouring the young of other 
culls, dispatching and tearing to pieces the sick or weakly, it is daunted by few things, 
even little by the sound of a gun. In Wijde Bay, North Spitsbergen, 1 shot a little auk 
(Mergulus alle) from a boat’s side, when there pounced down instantly upon it a glaucous 
gull—paying the penalty with its life—so instantly that the two birds fell to a “nght 
and left.” This great gull is found in both hemispheres; it is a cireumpolar bird. It 
makes a very large nest built up of seaweeds and hydrozoa placed, in a rocky district, on 
the cliffs, in a flat C:strict, on the shore. On the sand-banks of Kolguev Island you may 
see the nests of the glaucous gulls when a mile and more away; for they are there 
built up to some two and a-half feet high, and magnified by the mirage show up like 
martello towers along the ridge. So strong and fierce is the burgomaster that in the 
arctic he has but one rival, and of that one he is afraid. 
All these gulls, then, visit us from the north; we now come to some which, though 
in some instances their nesting ground may extend beyond the Arctic Circle, are not 
“arctic” gulls. ; 
There is a group of gulls known as “hooded” gulls from their heads being dark— 
in most cases black—in summer. One is the Little Gull (Larus miniitws), whose 
