THE HERRING-GULL. 363 



rising and dipping over a dense mass of fry, which appeared at 

 times breaking the surface of the water. * -^ "^ The great 

 body of sea- fowl appeared so much engrossed with their predatory 

 pursuits^ as to neither attend to the reports of the gun, or notice 

 the approach of the hooker, until the boat's bolt-sprit seemed 

 almost parting this countless host of floating and flying plun- 

 derers. -J^- -^^ •){• I fired, a solitary gull dropped in the water, 

 and half-a-dozen wounded birds separated from the crowd and 

 went screaming off to sea'' (pp. 147, 148); — the observation 

 displayed here is as good as the description. The preliminary ac- 

 tion to a play of gulls, as witnessed at the Gobbius in June 1817, 

 was thus described to me : — A few birds on detecting prey one- 

 fourth of a mile from the cliffs gave a shrill cry, when instantly 

 those seated on their nests, and others on wing about the" cliffs, 

 poured down like a snowy torrent to the spot, each uttering the 

 same sluill cry as that which had called its attention to the place 

 of prey. 



But this bird's mode of feeding is often commonplace enough. 

 As already mentioned, it rejoices, even where fish are to be had for 

 the catching, as at the Horn, in the tender flesh of young rabbits. 

 In Belfast Bay it is accused — of what we know the great black- 

 backed gull to be guilty — of attacking wild-fowl, more particularly 

 wigeon, which have been severely wounded by the shooters. One 

 was seen to attack a young cod-fish, of a few pounds weight, 

 in Larne Lough, and on another occasion to strike at and cut, 

 as if with a knife, a large sea-trout taken in a net. Mullet {Mngil 

 chelo) captured there are much injured and sometimes rendered 

 unsaleable by pieces being eaten out of them by the herring-gull.^ 

 It eats fragments of horse-flesh, separated from the carcase, on 

 which, however, it does not alight, like the crow. Most com- 

 monly it feeds on minute univalve moUusca [Rissoa, Lacuna, 

 LiUorinai) and Crustacea, with occasionally vegetable matter. On 

 this subject, I shall only add that a stomach examined by me 

 contained the remains of two crabs [Hi/as araneus), one of which 



* This bird is accused in the Ayr Advertiser (Aug. 1849) on the authority of tlic 

 proprietor of Eankinstonc, parish of Coylton, of attacking and killing young lambs 

 in the lambing season. 



