BONAPARTE'S GULL. 6 3 



Family— LARID&. Subfamily— LAR1NAZ. 



Bonaparte's Gull. 



Larus philadelpliia, Ord. 



THIS beautiful little Gull is a strictly North American species, which has, 

 probably by " circumstances over which it has no control," been driven, rather 

 than voyaged of its own will, to this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Eight or nine 

 specimens have, however, been taken in the British Islands — the majority in the 

 south or south-east of England ; thrice it has been taken on the eastern coasts 

 of Ireland, and once on Loch Lomond, in Scotland. Heligoland is the only other 

 part of Europe in which it has been observed, "during the severe winter of 1845, 

 the bird having been in winter plumage with beautiful red feet." No example of 

 the bird appears to have been recorded in this hemisphere since 1870. 



Bonaparte's Gull inhabits and breeds in the Fur countries — the semi-arctic 

 region of North America, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, its range 

 reaching to the arctic circle. In autumn it migrates southward, and is found from 

 mid-autumn through the winter in the Bermudas along the Atlantic sea board to 

 the Gulf of Mexico, and as far as California on the Pacific side. It lets the spring 

 be well over before it starts back to its bleak northern breeding grounds, where 

 it spends no longer time than to perform this call of nature. 



Both sexes of this Gull are similar in size and plumage. In full summer 

 garb they have the hood on the head dark greyish-black, with a white broken 

 ring round the eyes ; back and sides of the neck, throat, under wing-coverts, edge 

 of wing, the primary coverts, the tail, and the entire under surface, pure white; 

 mantle pale lavender-grey ; " the first primary white, except on the outer web and 

 across the tip, where it is black ; the second is black only across the tip and for 

 a little way up the margin of the inner web ; the third and fourth with small 

 white tips, broad black subterminal bars, and much pearl-grey above on the inner 

 webs ; the remaining primaries grey, with subterminal bars up to the seventh, 

 where the bar is broken, while on the eighth there is merely a dark margin to 

 the inner web" (Saunders); bill black; legs and feet red. Length 13 inches; 

 wing ioi ; tail 4! ; tarsus \\; middle toe with its claw same as the tarsus. 



Bonaparte's Gull mates by the end of May, and has begun to nest — in colonies 



