LAEUS. 



293 



Order GAVI.E. 



Family LARID^E. 



Subfamily LARINiE. 



Larus brunneicephalus, Jerd. The Brown-headed Gidl. 



Xema bninnicephala (Jerd.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 832. 



Larus brunneicephalus, Jerd., Htime, Rough Di-aft N. 8f E. no. 980, 



The nest of the Brown-headed Gull has never yet, I believe, 

 been taken, but the first Tarkand Mission found the birds very 

 abundant in July, at an elevation of about 15,000 feet, in a small 

 stream running down from C'hagra into the Pangong Lake, and 

 there is good reason to believe (all the birds seen were in full 

 breeding-plumage) that they had nests in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood. The lake itself is very salt and very bare, and doubtless it 

 was somewhere just at the mouth of the Chagra stream, which is 

 fresh, that these Gulls were breeding. 



Larus hempricM, Bonap. Hemprich's Gull. 

 Larus hemprichi, Bonap., Hume, Cat. no. 981 ter. 



Colonel Butler obtained eggs of Hemprich's Gull from the Island 

 of Astolah. He writes ; — " On the 6th August, 1877, I sent a boat 

 from Pusnee to the island of Astolah, on the Mekran coast, and 

 secured about 150 eggs of this species. The eggs were fresh, and 

 laid in nests built in the low salt bushes (Scdsola sp.), which are 

 scattered about the tableland on the top of the island. The only 

 information I .could gather from the boatmen is as follows : — The 

 nests, which are about the size of crows', are loose and ragged in 

 construction, composed of the twigs of the low salt bushes in which 

 they were built, and always carefully concealed from view. 



" I heard subsequently from other natives that the eggs were 

 sometimes laid on rocks, but always carefully hidden, and conse- 

 quently difficult to find. As there is no doubt that the eggs I 

 procured were laid in nests concealed in low bushes, I should be 

 inclined to doubt that the birds ever laid, like Terns, on the bare 

 ground. 



" The eggs, which according to the report of the boatmen who 

 took them vary in number from one to three, differ a good deal in 

 shape and colour." 



The eggs are broad ovals, many of them quite fowl-like in shape, 

 but some a little more pointed towards the small end. 



