THE CRUDEST NEST FORMS 79 



the margin of which a few bits of seaweed, stalks 

 of marine plants or twigs are artlessly arranged, or 

 in other cases it is scantily lined with dry grass 

 and other vegetable fragments. One of the most 

 elaborate nest-builders amongst the Terns is the 

 Noddy (Anous stolidus), its cradle being described 

 as often a large structure made of dry grass, 

 seaweed, and twigs, but these are so rudely massed 

 together as fully to warrant its inclusion amongst 

 the crude nest forms. The Skuas (Stercorariidse) 

 have little or no more claim to be regarded as nest- 

 builders. Their nests are mere hollows trod in the 

 moss or scraped out in barer ground, scantily lined 

 with dry grass or withered vegetable fragments ; this 

 description applying equally to the species that breed 

 in the highest latitudes of both hemispheres. The 

 Gulls (Laridse) are a trifle more elaborate in their 

 architecture, especially the smaller species or such 

 that habitually breed in marshes. The nests of 

 the larger species are usually crude in the extreme, 

 many being nothing but hollows in the sand, amongst 

 marine herbage or on ledges of clifFs, lined sparingly 

 with grass, straws, and scraps of dead vegetation. 

 Sometimes the rim of these hollows may be gar- 

 nished with a few dead twigs of heath or other 

 similar plants. Some nests (such as those of the 

 Glaucous Gull, Larus glaucus) are composed of heaps 

 of sand, the apex being slightly hollowed and strewn 

 with bits of dry seaweed. The Herring Gull (L, 



