366 LAIIIDJ5, 



bit of meat or bread from my hand. It shows great adroitness 

 in seizing food on the wing, and I sometimes amuse myself 

 by obliging it to do so, for on throwing a bit of bread into the 

 air, the gull flies up, and always catches it before reaching the 

 ground." 



Mr. Selby notices " the comparative rarity of the present 

 species upon the Northumbrian coast, where, however, its place is 

 amply supplied by the lesser black -backed gull" (p. 505). Sir 

 Wm. Jardine, too, describes it as "perhaps more local, scarcely 

 so abundant," as L. fuscus. Montagu remarks, though with- 

 out naming localities, that "there are fifty herring-gulls to 

 one of the lesser black-backed, and five hundred at least, perhaps 

 a thousand, to one of the larger black-backed gulls (Supp. Orn. 

 Diet, under Herring-Gull). His observations, however, were- 

 chiefly made on the south-western and western coast of England. 

 On all parts of the Irish coast which I have visited or had com- 

 munications from, the black-backed species were in very limited 

 numbers, compared with the herring-gull. In the north and east 

 of Ireland, where the gulls have most frequently come under my 

 own observation, there certainly is not one L. fuscus for a hun- 

 dred, perhaps not for two hundred, of the L. argentatus. 



Around the whole maritime cKfFs of Ireland, the herring-gull 

 is, in the breeding season, the most common species, being much 

 more widely distributed than the kittiwake ; generally a few of the 

 lesser black-backed, and more rarely of the greater black -backed, 

 nidify in its grandest haunts, still more seldom the common 

 gull. I have never heard of the herring- gull breeding around 

 the Irish coast elsewhere than on cliffs, except in the instance 

 abeady mentioned, and never about fresh water; — the black- 

 headed and lesser black-backed species only frequenting its vicinity. 



Dm-ing winter also, the herring-gull is, at least next to the 

 L. ridibundus, the most common species on such shores as are 

 known to me ; and in some localities is more frequent than that 

 bird. Indeed, when visiting different islands of Strangford Lough, 

 on the 22nd of June, 1846, this was the only guU we saw all 

 day, though it has no breeding-place near; — a flock of about 



