88 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



colony on wing, wheeling round his head, swooping down upon and screaming 

 at him. 



When fledged, the bill, legs and feet are livid corneous ; the feathers, which 

 are white in the adult, have a centre streak, or a bar of ashy-brown, and pale 

 edges ; and where black they are reddish-brown, with yellowish -white edges ; the 

 wing feathers are sooty or black, and the tail is mottled with brown which, near 

 the end, becomes almost a continuous bar, the tips of the feathers being greyish- 

 white; the bill is horn colour, and the legs and feet brownish- white. 



During its first autumn the bird undergoes no true moult, but the brown 

 becomes less marked in some parts, by loss of pigment, and more uniform, through 

 the wearing off of the pale tips. 



In the next spring there is a more general, but slow, moult, in which the brown 

 comes in of a less deep shade, and during the second autumn its colour becomes a 

 little paler still. 



During the next year, in spring and autumn by feather-changes, and loss of 

 pigment in them, the brown is still further lost ; bill yellow at its base, but without 

 the red spot on the angle of the mandible. 



In the fourth autumn this Gull has assumed almost the complete winter dress 

 of the adult — the white spot near the end of the primaries perhaps alone not being 

 well marked. 



The following spring — when the bird is in its fifth year — sees it in its first 

 nuptial plumage, which we have described above. As soon as that interesting 

 period is over, the Gull begins to assume its first mature winter garb, which differs 

 only from that of the summer in showing brown streaks on the head and neck. 



" The flight of this bird is peculiarly elegant " — if we may quote again from 

 Macgillivray — "resembling that of the Greater Black- backed Gull, but more easy 

 and buoyant, with the wings considerably curved. Its ordinary cry is loud, mellow 

 and somewhat plaintive, and when a number join in emitting it, which they 

 sometimes do when assembled for repose on an unfrequented beach or island, may 

 be heard at a great distance, and is then far from unpleasant. It also emits 

 occasionally a cackling or laughing cry, more mellow than that of the species 

 above named. It searches for food on the open sea, in estuaries, on the beaches 

 and frequently on the land, sometimes flying to a great distance from the coast. 

 Small fishes, Crustacea, echini, shell-fish [especially Tellina tenuis], land-mollusca 

 and earth-worms [moths and other insects] are its habitual food ; but it also eats 

 of stranded fishes, and devours young birds. When shoals of young herrings are 

 in the bays, creeks, or estuaries, it may often be seen in great numbers, inter- 

 mingled with other Gulls ; but when reposing, whether on the sea or on the land, 



