60 EEUGLIN'S HE BEING GULL. 



of the iris offers another peculiarity; it is a pale eartli brown, and is 

 covered throughout with fine blackish drops, points, and markings. 

 In the young bird the beak is a horny yellow flesh colour, 

 the lower mandible sprinkled with lead grey. Before the points of 

 both jaws is a horny cross band. The circle round the eye and 

 iris a light brown grey, the latter also covered with black spots. 

 Jesse obtained a bird of this species, with very worn feathers, on the 

 8th. of June, in the bay of Adulis (Zula). I observed it in the winter 

 on the coast of the Sinai peninsula — in September at Kas Belul, 

 and in October and November on the Somali coast, not far from 

 Med and Luzggon, singly, and in pairs, so that I was inclined to 

 think it was only a chance winter visitor on the east African coast. 



^'An old male shot by me in the Somali region has the winter 

 plumage, with the large wing feathers rather worn, and new secondaries. 

 The former show, therefore, no trace of white spots on the tip, but 

 just before the tip of the outermost feathers a small white space. 

 In the neck the feathers were streaked on the shaft with brown. A 

 second bird from the same sjjot differs also from the youthful plumage 

 of the old bird, but the back shows, however, already the soft smoky 

 grey tone of the latter. Two younger specimens from the Sarpa 

 steppes (collection of Glitsch) entirely agree, but are rather smaller. 

 In one of them the cheeks are dull grey. Both birds are streaked 

 on the crown of head, neck, and sides of throat, the remainder of 

 the upper side smoky grey, with washed out and dull but clear edges 

 to the feathers; underneath and rump white, the latter washed with 

 smoky grey, every feather having a white base and edge, sometimes 

 also with a whitish cross band; the back and upper tail coverts 

 with plain rhoiiiboidal and arrow-shaped dark brownish grey spots; 

 under tail coverts quite as much marked, but paler; greater wing 

 feathers (primaries) brown-black, paler underneath, having here white 

 shafts; tail feathers white, with brownish black markings (half way), 

 broadest in the centre; tips of the feathers white, and behind the 

 dark bands at the end there are from four to five brownish-black cross 

 bands, which are nearly lost on the middle feathers. One of these 

 young birds shows quite plainly how the mantle feathers change 

 colour; they are dark in the centre, and the rest clear smoke brown, 

 at the edges broad white." 



" Larus cacchinans belongs, as already shown, to the rare visitors 

 on the coast of East Africa. The birds of this species observed by 

 me were principally in creeks and harbours where the breakers are 

 not violent. Here for the most part they fly low and gently over 

 the borders of rivers, the head drawn back, and turning here and 



