THE LESSER BLACK- BACKED GULL. 373 



are believed not to build in company with the herring-gulls on 

 the cliffs between Cork and Kinsale. This, if correct, woidd 

 agree wdth my own observation in the north of Ireland, that the 

 lesser black-backed gull only frequents the greatest breeding- 

 haunts of that species. Tor instance, it is found at the Gobbins, 

 where from 1,000 to 2,000 pair of those birds nidify, but not one 

 have I ever seen about a nest at the ranges of cliffs in the vicinity 

 of the Giant^s Causeway or Downhill, where the L. argentatus is 

 more scattered and in much smaller numbers ; nor is it named as 

 building in Eathlin. About Youghal, adult birds have been 

 observed in the breeding-season."^ They nidify in the cliffs near 

 Howth (county Dublin), and, as has been supposed, also at Lam- 

 bay; but in the sunjmer of 1849 none bred there.t 



I have never observed this bird so abundant anywhere in 

 Ireland as at Lough Neagh, where from the people believing 

 that it subsists on the Coregonus Pollan, it is called the pollan 

 gull, or Lough Neagh herring-gull, from the names applied 

 to this fish. Wlien visiting the breeding-haunt of the black- 

 headed gull and common tern at Eam^s Island in this lake, on 

 the 15th of June, 1833, we shot an immature bird of this kind 

 and saw about thirty which kept aloof from the other species ; 

 they were stationed on the very small detached rocks or heaps of 

 upraised gravel, which stretch into the lake from the promontory 

 occupied by their congeners. Our boatmen, and the serjeant 

 in charge of Ram's Island, stated of their own knowledge, that 

 this bird rarely bred here, but they had found its nests occasionally 

 near the outer extremity of the present haunt of the black- 

 headed gull : the eggs were known from those of the latter 

 species by their superior size. I observed at Massareene deer- 

 park bordering this lake, on the 33rd of September, 1834, not 

 less than forty mature lesser black-backed gulls congregated to- 

 gether on the beach; and remarked old birds about different 

 parts of the lake again on the 29th of May, 183G, and 12tli of 

 the same month, in 1838. 



* ]\Ir. K. Ball. t Mr. R. J. Montgomery. 



