THE BLACK-HEADED GULL. 325 



year than ever. One of my companions, who had been here 

 a few years before, did not then see more than one third 

 of the birds which we observed. In consequence of their 

 being protected, we can judge with certainty of the natural 

 period of production of the young birds, and several other points 

 wliich cannot be determined in localities where the eggs are, time 

 after time in the same season, carried away. Thanks to Earl 

 O^Neill, the beautiful Lams ridlhiindiis and Sterna Idrundo had 

 at least one asylum of peace and safety in the north of Ireland, 

 where they could, without dread or fear of annoyance from man, 

 increase and multiply their species. 



When at Ram's Islnnd on the .5th of August, 1846, I was in- 

 formed that owing to the breeding-ground being inundated, not 

 a black-headed gull bred there that year. In the preceding year 

 they were abundant; probably not less so than in lSo3. On the 

 4th of June, 1S50, this island was visited by a party of ornitlio- 

 logists, wlio did not see more than two pair of these gulls near it, 

 and were told that hardly any had bred there during the last few 

 years. The decrease w^as attributed by the boatmen partly to the 

 frecpjent robbery of the eggs, and partly to the present custom of 

 spreading the fishermen's nets over the ground where the nests 

 were formerly placed. One nest, containing two eggs, was found 

 on the island.* 



In the last-named month, a fisherman at Toome stated that 

 great numbers of these guUs bred on Scabby Island, Lough 

 Beg, four or five years ago, but that none do so now.t 



A former breeding-haunt of these gulls, on an island at Lougli 

 Achery, county Down, is mentioned in the second volume of tliis 

 work (p. 146), in connexion with the heron, which they drove 

 from the locality, that they might appropriate it to themselves. 

 One shot at Lough Clay (south), in the same county, in the sum- 

 mer of 1845, where a pair only bred that year, came under mj 

 notice, as have single specimens obtained in the breeding-season 

 at islands of Lough Egish and Lough-a-vane, county Mojia- 

 ghan. About a thousand birds, old and young together, were 

 * Mr. J. 1{. GaiTcil. t Ibid. 



