LARID^. 387 



summer to nest, breeding in colonies on trees near the Great Bear Lake, 

 the nest being made of sticks, and throughout Arctic America, its eggs 

 having beeu taken near Anderson-River Fort. 



The last of the Cornish examples, shot at Xewlyn, was examined by 

 Mr. J". E. Harting, and exhibited at a meeting of the Linuean Society on 

 4th December, 1S90.J 



[Ohservation. — Besides the various Gulls we have enumerated, several 

 others have occurred on British waters, but not in the South-west. 

 These are the Laughing Gull, Lams atricilla, an American black-headed 

 species, a single British example having been in Col. Montagu's collection, 

 said to have been shot at Winchelsea so long ago as August 1774- ; the 

 Adriatic Gull, Lams melanoceplialus, a common Mediterranean black- 

 headed species, of which an immature bird is said to have been shot at 

 Barking Creek, January 1866 ; and, lastly, perhaps the most beautiful, 

 as it is the rarest of all the Gulls, the Cuneate-tailed Gull, of Boss, 

 Ithodostetliia rosea, a rose-breasted species with white head, black collar 

 round the neck, blue mantle and white underparts, with a white wedge- 

 sliaped tail having the two central feathers slightly elongated, which is a 

 native of the Arctic regions, a very doubtful example of which is claimed 

 from Yorkshire (Yarrell's B. Birds, 4th ed. vol. iii. p. 586) ; but very 

 considerable doubt attaches to all these birds,] 



Sabine's Grull. Xema sahinii (Joseph Sabine). 



An accidental visitor, of rare occurrence, in autumn, and always in 

 immature plumage. 



This very beautiful Arctic species, which is only a trifle larger than the 

 Little Gull, from which in all stages of plumage it is easily to be distin- 

 guished, both by its forked tail and by the form of its beak, has, according 

 to Mr. Howard Saunders, only been obtained three times in the United 

 Kingdom in its adult state (in which it has its head leaden black with a 

 dark black collar around the neck), the last of the three having occurred 

 after the heavy October gales of 1891, at Lymington, in Hampshire. In 

 its immature plumage Sabine's Gull can hardly bo considered as a rare 

 straggler to our coasts in the autumn. We have ourselves detected 

 examples of it in many West Country collections, where it was either 

 labelled the ' Little Gull,' or was entirely unknown to its possessor. 

 Mr. Cecil Smith possessed one in his collection wliich had been shot many 

 years ago in South Devon. We have no information of any specimens 

 from the North Devon estuaries, but feel certain they must have beeu 

 occasionally visited by this small species of Gull, as examples have been 

 more than once obtained some distance up the Bristol Channel. Thus, 

 we ourselves examined three examples which wore secured on the sands 

 at WestI)n-HUl)er-!^^are at difj'erent dates, and saw one of them alive on 

 September 14th, 1^07. On the afternoon of that day, when a strong 

 westerly gale was blowing, we were walking up the sands and saw five 



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