LONG-WINGED SWIMMERS 43 



gradually exposed by the melting ice. They frequently rob 

 other water birds, as a merganser or a grebe. As these 

 divers rise to the surface with a fish, the gull, with a dex- 

 trous swoop, seizes his prey and makes off with it. Some- 

 times the gulls so gorge themselves as to be seen flying away 

 with a half-swallowed fish protruding from the bill. The 

 birds are highly useful as scavengers and destroyers of 

 insects. 



Rude nests of hay, sticks, and grass are placed on the 

 ground, usually on islands. Three buff, clay-colored eggs, 

 spotted and blotched with brown, are laid in May. 



BONAPARTE'S GULL 



" This pretty little gull claims the whole of North Amer- 

 ica as its home, although it nests only north of the United 

 States, apparently not quite to the Arctic Circle. This 

 species is often common near streams and small bodies of 

 water, large enough to furnish their food of fish. The 

 three acres of the Oberlin, Ohio, waterworks reservoir, well 

 within the city, is visited each spring by flocks which feed 

 upon the half-domesticated fish found there. I have often 

 seen flocks of twenty or more birds passing over plowed 

 fields during the vernal migration, sometimes even stopping 

 to snatch some toothsome grub from the freshly turned fur- 

 row, but oftener sweeping past in that lithe, graceful flight 

 so characteristic of this small gull. 



" To the farm boy, shut in away from any body of water 

 larger than an ice-pond, where no ocean birds could ever 

 be expected to wander, the appearance of this bird, bearing 



