THE COMMON GULL. 353 



float on the waves : — their busy feeding-time is when the tide 

 ebbs. Minute Crustacea (often Idotece) form the bulk of their 

 food. The contents of the stomach of one bird killed in Belfast 

 Bay, were about fifty univalve mollusca, including Rissoa labiosa 

 (fine specimens)^ M. ulvce, Lacuna quadrifasciata, and small 

 Littorina ; they also partake of marine plants. In addition to 

 earth-worms and insect larvae found on dissection of birds killed 

 inland, vegetable food, including husks of grain, frequently 

 occurs : — a frog was found in one killed in November, near 

 Wexford. A gentleman of my acquaintance induced a gull — 

 that he believed to be of tliis species — to follow a steamer from 

 Liverpool to the Isle of Man, merely by throwing towards it 

 pieces of bread, which were invariably seized before they reached 

 the water. 



Many notes descriptive of size, plumage, &:c., at different 

 seasons, and at the various ages of the bird, are before me, but 

 it will suffice to select two or three of the most striking : — 



October 2Srd, 1833. — An adult Lams canus, killed to-day in Belfast estuary, had 

 the plumage of the breast, Ij^ly, and under tail-coverts, faiutly blushed with red, 

 like the same portions of the L. ridibundus ; the tarsi were yellow, with the bluish- 

 green colour of the approaching season, indicated only as yet at the folds of the 

 tai'sal joints. Of two other adult bii'ds, obtained on the 10th of September and 

 the 18th of October of the preceding year, the former had the tarsi, toes, and webs 

 of feet of a uniform bluish ash-colour, and the latter of a delicate bluish flesh- 

 colour, faintly clouded with pale yellow about the tarsal joints ; its bill was wholly 

 bluish-green.* December 2it/i, 1885. — Being struck with the appearance of the short 

 biU of an adult L. canus, procm'ed near Bellast, I measured it, and found tliis organ 

 to be of similar dimensions with that of the L. brachycentrus. Rich, and Swains. 

 February Vi/h, 1838. — On examination of two specimens of L. camts, shot to-day, 

 the one adult, and the other immature (a bii-d of last summer), their entire length 

 was the same, but the wings of the young bird, from the carpus to the end of the 

 longest quiU, were an inch longer than those of the old. The bill of the old bird 

 was blackish- green, tipped with wax -yellow; in the young, leaden-blue at base; 

 blackish towards the point. Tlie tarsi of the old were greyish-green ; of the young, 

 bluish flesh-coloui". 



Of the breeding-haunts of the common gull around the coast 



* Adult birds shot at Horn Head, in the last week of Juno this sanu> year, had 

 the tarsi and loos brilliant ycUow : — Ihcy arc described as being at (his season 

 "greenish-grey " (Jardiue), and " dark greenish-ash" (YaxTell). 



VOL. III. 2 A 



