Bonaparte's gull. 551 



bine, much paler than in atricilla ; hood slaty-plumbeous, with white touches on the 

 eyelids ; many wing-ooverts white ; feet chrome-yellow, tinged with coral red; webs Ver- 

 million. Primaries finally:— The first 5-6 with the shafts white except at tip; first 

 white, with outer web and extreme tip black ; second white, more broadly crossed with 

 black ; 3d to 6th-8th with the black successively decreasing. In winter no hood, but a 

 dark auricular spot. Toung : — Mottled and patched above with brown or gray, and 

 usually a dusky bar on the wing ; the tail with a black bar, the primaries with more 

 black, the bill dusky, much of the lower mandible flesh-colored or yellowish, as are the 

 feet. 



Habitat, North America. Casual in Europe. 



Common spring and fall migrant on Lake Erie ; less common and 

 rather irregular in the interior of the State. 



Bonaparte's Gull is perhaps the most numerous of all the Giills in the 

 interior of the State, where it sometimes appears in spring in consid- 



Laeus atricilla Linnaeus. 



Laiigliiiag GriiU. 



Larus atricilla, Kirtland, Ohio Geolog. Surv., 18.38, 166, 185.— Audubon, B. Am., vi, 

 1844, 152 (under L. zonorhijnchus). — Wheaton, Food of Birds, etc., Ohio Agrio. Eep. for 

 1874, 575 ; Reprint, 1875, 15.— Coues, Birds of N. W., 1874, 650. — Langdon, Cat. 

 Birds of Cin., 1877, 18; Eevised List, Journ. Cin. Soo. Nat. Hist., i, 1879, 189; 

 Keprint, 23. 



Chroieocephalus atrioilla, Wheaton, Ohio Agric. Eep. for 1860, 371, 379; Reprint, 1861, 

 13, 21. 



Larua atricilla, Linn^us, Syst. Nat., i, 1766, 225. 

 Chroicooocephalus atricilla, Lawrence, Birds N. Am., 1858,850. 

 Larus (^Chroecocephalus) atricilla, Coues, Birds N. W., 1874, 650. 



Probably never identified as an Ohio bird. Audubon's statement, quoted on page 547, on 

 which Dr. Kirtland named this species as Ohioan, is contradicted by his other statements 

 (B. Am., vii, p. 138) : " I never met with them on the Mississippi, above New Orleans," 

 and (ib., p. 142) : "Up the Mississippi to New Orleans." My own identification in 1861, lam 

 convinced was an error, the specimen in question heing pMladelphia in breeding plumage. 

 On submitting this matter with others to Mr. Robert Eidgway, he kindly favored me 

 with the following, under date of March 31, 1881 : 



"As to the occurrence of X. atricilla and Sterna macrura, I do not know but that 

 taking the character of the evidence into consideration, it would be best to expunge, 

 both from the list. I know of no record which I could rely on for the occurrence of 

 either of these species anywhere in the Mississippi or Ohio Valleys, not excepting my own 

 for L. atricilla on the Wabash. Black-headed Gulls much larger than L.pTiiladelphia have 

 been repeatedly seen there, but they may have been L.frariklini. Still, all the birds of 

 this family are great wanderers occasionally, and there is of course a reasonable ^j-oSo- 

 iility of the occurrence, more or less often of both of these species far from their usual 

 haunts. Since the publication of my Catalogue of Illinois" Birds I have become ' autop- 

 tically ' acquainted with L. atricilla in a region where it abounds (coast of Virginia) and 

 now more than ever doubt having seen it in Southern Illinois, L. fra/nklini being more 

 probably the species noticed." 



