BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



97 



food, picking up many a dead fish that would otherwise remain to pollute the 

 water. So far from appreciating this useful service — to say nothing of the 

 attraction which the presence of so many large and beautiful birds lends to such 

 a place — the park keepers at Fresh Pond, acting it is said, under direct orders 

 from the officials of the Cambridge Water Board, have repeatedly attempted to 

 drive the Gulls away by shooting at them with rifles. Whenever the birds have 

 been unmolested for a time they have visited the pond very regularly in autumn, 

 and within recent years in constantly increasing numbers. On December 23, 

 1900, there were fully a thousand there, and on Christmas Day of the same year 

 Mr. Walter Deane counted 1375 collected in and about an opening in the ice, 

 while he estimated the number present on the morning of November 30, 1902, 

 at upwards of 2400. 



Within the past few years the proportion of young to adult birds among the 

 Herring Gulls which pass, the winter in the neighborhood of Boston, has very 

 materially increased, a fact which indicates that the protection afforded, under 

 Mr. WiUiam Dutcher's supervision, to the breeding colonies scattered along the 

 coast of Maine, has been conducted faithfully and with marked practical success. 



12. Larus Philadelphia (Ord). 

 Bonaparte's Gull. 



Rare transient visitor in spring. 



Dr. C. W. Townsend tells me that on April 7, 1905, he observed a Bona- 

 parte's Gull on wing near the Union Boat House on the Boston side of the Back 

 Bay Basin. As it was in full nuptial plumage, and as its dark plumbeous head 

 and reddish orange legs and feet were distinctly made out by Dr. Townsend, his 

 identification of the bird may be accepted without hesitation. 



Messrs. Francis G. and Morris C. Blake have reported ^ seeing a Gull 

 which they referred to this species "flying over the Charles River near the 

 Harvard Bridge, May 14, 1904." This record is too brief and vague to be 

 wholly satisfactory. 



Bonaparte's Gull is of common occurrence (especially in autumn) along the 

 Massachusetts coast, and, as it is also perfectly at home about inland waters, 

 such as Lake Umbagog, there would seem to be no good reasons why it should 



1 F. G. and M. C. Blake, Auk, XXI, 1904, 391. 



